Open Source Solutions in High School Mechatronics

Open Source Solutions in High School MechatronicsDmitry KupriyanovSaint Petersburg National Research University of Informational Technology, Mechanics and Optics (Russia)qudmv@yandex.ruAbstract— This article describes advantages of using opensourcetechnologies in keeping educational process up-to-date. Itcontains an example of educational course, designed to beimplemented on the 1-year students of Mechatronic departmentof NRU ITMO. This course is based around Arduino opensourcehardware. Using cheap and up-to-date technical solutionsmotivates students to go deeper in their specialty and createprojects at home. Great amount of different articles, projectsand approaches generated by worldwide community helpsstudents to find way of learning more suitable for them.Explaining the basics and helping with advice becomes theprimary task of the tutor. Rapid development of open-sourcetechnologies and their low price makes educational process moreflexible and allows integration of new solutions right on the way.Open-source license gives no restrictions in selling devices basedon the technology explained during course, this gives students anopportunity to earn money selling their project works, whileproprietary educational kits forbid using their equipment forcommercial purposes.I. INTRODUCTIONIt is common knowledge that mechatronics is a rapidlydeveloping field of engineering. This fact makes it critical toteach students using up-to-date and powerful hardware.Educational courses are usually lagging behind life and whenwe talk about rapidly developing field of science, thisbackwardness can be fatal. And, as we are talking aboutapplicable science, no one is interested in producingspecialists, who are well trained to work with outdatedtechnical solutions. So nowadays the main goal ofmechatronic methodologist is not only to create an up-to-dateeducational course, but to develop a positive approach, whichwill make educational program more flexible and, as a result,actual.Fig. 1. Mechatronics as unity of science fields, the best way to show thenumber of subjects, which must be covered by the program.Open-source solutions can lend a helping hand in thissituation. They have several advantages over proprietaryeducational kits. They are cheaper, they have larger supportcommunities, their licensing makes it possible to create enduserproduct and modify them, when it is necessary.II. GENERAL OVERVIEWLet’s go through these points. Price is a serious issue forthe university, as each kit’s price is multiplied by the numberof workplaces you need to equip.The size of community is critical if we want our course tobe flexible enough. It is impossible to include all thequestions in the educational program due to time issues.Motivated students will be able to find answers to theirquestions, think about new projects and, maybe, discovertheir own area of interest in mechatronics using communitysupport, tutors will only have to listen to the interests of theirstudents and adapt the course to the current needs by usingand, what is more important, modifying community materials.Motivation is a key to success. If it will be clear to eachstudent involved in educational process that he can influencerange of topics, learning rate and other issues, he will takethis responsibility, which will result in a more serious attitudeto the subject.It may look like there is no need in creation of specialeducational course, as there are dozens of projects andsupportive materials, provided by community, but that’s notthat simple. If we talk about 1- or 2-year students weexperience certain problems with their skills. As there are nosubjects somehow connected to mechatronics in schoolprogram, students have drastic differences in their traininglevel. This makes it necessary to equalize their skills first.Here is where we need basic set of tasks and theoreticalmaterial, but it also need to be balanced enough, so the skilledstudents won’t be just wasting their time. This is a specialtask for each particular country, so methodologist will have alot of work if we keep in mind, that quality of school-leaverschanges from year to year and is different in differentcountries.What about licensing? It may seem that possibility ofmodification, reproduction [1] and selling end-user productbased on the initial technology are not so necessary ineducational process, but let’s think about it. Modification andreproduction are the key conditions of flexibility. You neverknow what can happen, but it will be disappointing to writeoff the equipment, which can be adapted to actual needs, butit is prohibited by the license agreement. Possibility to createend-user products can also be a weighty argument, as studentswill be even more motivated, they’ll understand, that they canmake money with the exact technology, they are being taught.317

III. OPEN SOURCE FOR BEGINNERSAn experimental group was formed in an attempt to createsuch educational course for 1-year students. It consists onlyof volunteers, who are willing to discover something new andcreate their projects far from narrow frames of speciallydesigned kits. Arduino was selected as the core of the newmechatronic course. It has all the benefits, described above,but of course there are some limitations, which are not criticalfor the beginner course. Microcontroller is programmed usingArduino IDE [2] – open source integrated developmentenvironment. Schemes and circuits are drawn using opensource Fritzing editor.Arduino microcontrollers are basicaly programmed withArduino programming language, which is nothing more thanProcessing/Wiring – a C++ dialect [3]. So the programmingskills, gained during the course won't be useless later, on ahigher levels.As the skills of different students are different, some ofthe learners experience problems even with the principles ofnon-soldering breadboard. Fritzing[2] editor is really helpfulhere, as it can transform the visual appearance of thebreadboard into principal electric scheme. This feature givesan opportunity for students, who are not familiar withprincipal schemes to catch up with their more skilledcolleagues. This makes it possible to make educationalprocess clear for students of all skill levels.was needed, work with it''s specification and write a program,using examples from community web-sites.Also, while developing mechatronic projects, we shouldn'tforget about GUI. At the moment GUI is written using VisualBasic, but due to platform limitations it will be replacedeither by Python, or by Qt.Students like this approach and show good results. Theyare motivated to browse community resources on their ownand pick new ideas there. If they find something difficult tounderstand, they ask the tutor and receive qualifiedexplanation. All these questions are also recorded in order toform theoretical part of the course.IV. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTBy this time project is 30% ready. There are still a lot oflessons to carry. But current situation makes the future of theproject look optimistic. If it will work out the expected way,we will have a good introductory course designed for studentsby students which will include all necessary equipment,theoretical and practical parts inseparably connected together.Moreover we will have an approach, which will make us ableto create courses for higher levels.Fig. 2. Visual and principal appearance of electric scheme in Fritzing editor.Each lesson students discuss different problems whichoccur on their way, while they are developing their ownideas. Each lesson some small devices are created, which helpstudents to gain experience in designing circuits andunderstand new syntax constructions. Each theoretical pieceof information is imprinted in their memory by applying it onpractice. By the end of each lesson a number of newquestions is accumulated, these questions will be the topic ofthe next lesson. All these questions, sketches and schemes arerecorded and will be transformed into a workbook by the endof the experiment. Also list of necessary equipment is beingcreated.For example, during creating a large LED array, studentsfaced problem of limited number of outputs. They wereimmediately introduced to shifters. While the principles of theshifter were explained, students also found out someinformation about electronic device packages, theirdifferences, mounting and purposes. According to thisinformation, they were able to choose the exact shifter thatFig. 3. Students working together on the project.Talking about limitations, there is a prejudice againstArduino controllers. Some specialists think that theirsimplicity makes their use in High School inappropriate. Thecase described above is a particular case. Some simplicity isnecessary here. Moreover, the change of programminglanguage is also possible here. But if we talk about higherlevels, there are enough open source projects that can beinteresting for our purposes. For example Robot OperatingSystem, distributed and developed under BSD license. Butthis is a topic for another discussion.[1] http://gnu.org[2] http://arduino.cc[3] http://fritzing.orgREFERENCES318