1. Use this laboratory in class

1.1. What is the LabsLand Hive?

The LabsLand Hive is an Electronics remote laboratory for building analog circuits. You can see below how the real equipment looks like:

Internally, it has a set of boards that each of them include different types of boards for adding components. If you have your own Hive, you can connect your own components and build your own circuits for your classes.

You can read the paper: LabsLand Electronics Laboratory: Distributed, Scalable and Reliable Remote Laboratory for Teaching Electronics, presented at the REV2023 conference in Greece, obtaining the Best Paper Award.

1.2. What is LabsLand?

LabsLand is a global network of real laboratories, available online. Hive is one of the LabsLand laboratories (Physics, Electronics, FPGA, Arduino, Chemistry, Biology and others). Universities and schools can access different Hive systems in different locations through LabsLand.

1.3. How to use this laboratory in class?

LabsLand provides two kind of services:

  • Access existing Hive laboratories purchasing licenses for your students. No equipment is needed: you can access real labs from other universities in the LabsLand network.

  • Purchase your own LabsLand Hive for your institution and connect it to the LabsLand netowkr

In both cases, LabsLand supports the integration of the LabsLand Hive in different Learning Management Systems (such as Canvas, Moodle, Sakai, Google Classroom) and others.

For any of these options contact LabsLand for more details at hive@labsland.com!

1.4. What is VISIR?

The Hive is inspired by the VISIR open source remote laboratory, that LabsLand use to offer and deploy around the world, for example:

VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems In Reality) was developed by the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden), under the leadership of Ingvar Gustavsson. You have a great video explaining the role of this extraordinary person here that changed the landscape of remote education:

VISIR is a remote laboratory: it is real equipment that can be manipulated from the Internet. The following picture:

_images/visir-picture.jpg

Fig. 1.4.1 VISIR system

1.5. What is the difference between VISIR and LabsLand Hive?

The LabsLand Hive reuses only two parts of open source software from the original VISIR: the user interface and a small part of the measurement server. Everything else has been built from scratch to focus on:

  • Reliability: in the LabsLand Hive, each circuit is built and properly disconnected after each usage. This includes discharging every component that might be charged, including coils and capacitors. This is critical to ensure that the equipment will not break.

  • Scalability: if 100 students are using the laboratory, they are automatically distributed among multiple copies, decreasing the time required to access each setup.

  • Cost-effective: the LabsLand Hive includes two nodes in each setup for a fraction of the original cost of VISIR.

  • Increased realism: the LabsLand Hive includes cameras so students can see that the circuits are being built in real-time.

  • Many improvements in terms of security, user experience and new features.

1.6. What is next?

You can reach read the User Guide, or you can read the available circuits, starting in Circuits with resistors.