LabRTC, Dr Tim Drysdale (OSHCamp 2016)
Channel: AB Open
Date: 29/08/2017

Now that web infrastructure is finally delivering on the promises made in the 90s, instant real-time interactions with live hardware on the other side of the world are a reality. For example, we have recently been testing a rotating pendulum that can be controlled from a mobile phone, tablet or PC, from anywhere in the world, with no noticeable lag in the video feed.

This approach is at the core of the new openSTEM lab being created at the Open University, as part of a £2.7M HEFCE project. The Open University are world leaders in connecting knowledge with distance students, and are now tackling the challenge of linking distance students in their homes with state of the art hardware on our campus, yet achieving the same response times as if they were in the same room with it.

This talk will present core aspects of the technology behind our new openSTEMlab for electronics, as well as give you a teaser of the open-source version of our software that we are developing for eventual release to our students (and you) for use with open-source hardware in your own projects. Attendees will also be given the opportunity to remotely access activities in the openSTEMlab itself over coming months, as it enters alpha and beta phases ahead of the first electronics courses going live in October 2017.

* Dr Tim Drysdale is a Senior Lecturer in electronics at The Open University, leading the development of the openSTEMlab and the creation of two new electronics courses. His research area involves antenna design and numerical software development.