Design and Development of Virtual Lab Environment for Embedded System and IoT Applications

In recent years, the education officials have been forced to cancel classes and close the doors of the campus across the world in response to the growth of coronavirus outbreak. Due to the development of e-learning, a significant transformation is happening in education. Digital platforms are used in e-learning for giving instructions remotely. The faculty chose to take video conference classes using one platform and the resources are uploaded in another platform which are accessed by students. But while coming to laboratory classes, the hands-on experience of students on the equipment and components are totally missed. Resources are in the colleges and students are at home. This separation creates a long gap in the education. At KPR Institution of Engineering and Technology (KPRIET), a virtual lab setup with controllers and essential hardware modules was implemented in the Internet of Things (IoT) laboratory of Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) Department, where students can access and control it from their current location using secured login credentials.Virtual setup provides an easy access for the students to get hands-on experience with the academic laboratory sessions. These sessions are very useful for the students to gain more relevant and keen knowledge of their laboratories. This project provides a greater number of students to engage with their academic theory and practical laboratory sessions. We use server software and addons along with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) as well as Virtual Network Computing (VNC).