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IoT as a universal subject area for a diversified technical university

The student asks: “And the Internet of things is when
I go to the Internet and buy things there myself? "

We have prepared this article together with our colleagues from the Institute of Information Technologies MIREA. The IoT course of Samsung Academy (we wrote about the program earlier) in MIREA started in pilot mode last year, and since the school year is ending, we want to share interesting observations and conclusions.


Know-how of students MIREA. Add coins to the ribbed radiator. 25 rubles - and the Samsung Artik 10 computer is not afraid of overheating! How do you like that, Ilon Musk?

IoT Samsung Academy at MIREA


A two-semester optional course on the Internet of Things has been held since October 2017 for students of the 3rd and 4th courses of the following areas: Computer Science and Computer Engineering, Information Systems and Technologies, Software Engineering and Automation of Technological Processes and Production. On a competitive basis, 5 groups of 15 people were formed (in total, more than 3,000 students study at the IT Institute of MIREA).

And in the second semester, students' enthusiasm for the Internet of Things led to two important, initially unplanned events:

  1. At the request of students and teachers, Andrei Sergeevich Zuev, Director of the IT Institute of MIREA, helped organize an additional training course on microcontroller programming.
  2. In April 2018, the same team organized a hackathon for students with a track on the Internet of Things.

As a result, it turned out not only to connect all areas of IT training to the Academy course, provide students with real-life cases and introduce the format of project activities, but also to deepen training in the field of microprocessor programming. And Hakaton introduced competitive spirit into the educational process.

In addition, for students it was a new experience in finding technical and architectural solutions, programming IoT devices and systems, and working with the often unpredictable real hardware. For a university, this is important not only in terms of the necessary skills for a professional career in the field of system engineering, but also in attracting interested students to research activities. After all, the Internet of things is the widest field for research!


The monitoring system is a useful and quite feasible task for the student.

Anton Mironov, teacher and course coordinator, considers:
Systems engineering is the most important direction; without it, the fourth industrial revolution has no chance of realization (Industry 4.0). Until the business sees, does not understand and does not appreciate the risks of introducing a new technology, it will not be possible to attract money for its development. The end customer does not buy an IT solution; he buys profits from his future application.
As part of the program, we pay great attention to the possibilities of applying technology in the real world. About this Anton Mironov says so:
Now IT and business do not always find a common language. "Managers" and "developers" are divided due to the specifics of their tasks, subject areas and criteria for evaluating performance. And because it is so important for future developers to own the basics of economics and management. Moreover, it is not a secret that with rare exceptions the managerial career in our high-tech field begins with engineering positions.
Moreover, with the development of information technology, there is a specialization - for example, the gap between developers of application software and developers of hardware is growing. From this point of view, the Internet of things is an area where specialists of completely different profiles intersect.

How did you manage to implement this versatility in high school with the traditional division into departments and areas of training?

Chairs of MIREA in the context of the Internet of Things


The subject area of ​​the Internet of Things has become a link both between the areas of preparation of the IT institute and between the different profiles of each area. All issuing departments of the institute found their specificity in this area:


Initially, the task was not to adapt the course of the Academy to the specifics, specialization and areas of interest of the departments of the institute. But during the year, in the process of teaching students and receiving feedback from them, the departments discovered new possibilities for using the teaching materials, experience and case studies of the Academy. On its basis, the interpenetration of the competencies of programmers and engineers (“coders” and “hardware workers”) began to develop. Moreover! The students of the Institute of Cybernetics became the participants of the courses on their own initiative (and at first incognito).

It seemed that the question should have arisen: what about the differences between departments, areas of training and profiles? But by itself it turned out that people get what they lack: “hardware workers” start to program, and “coders” - master circuitry.

Result: 11 students from among the students of the course write final qualifying works on IoT topics. Diplomas, of course, “sharpened” under the department, areas of training and profiles: everyone considers the case of IoT from the point of view of their specifics.


MIREA students came to listen to the reports on InoThings ++. For many, this was the first experience of attending a professional conference.

Additional course on microcontrollers


As we said, in order to strengthen the training of students, it was decided to organize another additional optional course on microcontroller topics. The result was a separate project. The lectures were led by expert Oleg Artamonov ( olartamonov ) from Unwired Devices, based on their materials he began a series of articles, and MIREA recorded and published videos on YouTube, and in 360-degree format!

The following topics were covered in lectures and laboratory work:

  1. Microcontrollers: memory, peripherals, registers. Firmware. Operating system. Work with git.
  2. Microcontrollers: GPIO, interrupts, timers. Operating systems: multitasking, streams, messages.
  3. Work with the operating system. Modules, drivers, HAL. Setting the OS build.
  4. Microcontroller I / O Interfaces SPI, I2C, UART and others. Work with drivers in the OS.
  5. Work with analog signals. Signal Digitization (ADC). Generate analog signals.
  6. Energy saving modes of operation.
  7. Internet of Things Security.

As they say, the appetite comes with eating - by the end of the course, our students decided that there were not enough lectures on two more important topics: on debugging tools and on the experience of small-scale production of computing devices. As a result, only in May 2018, the entire course of nine lectures was completed.


Interface Workshop. Oscilloscope instead of a thousand words.

Hackathon


On April 15, 2018, an open 12-hour hackathon of the IT Institute was held, called PandaHack, which brought together more than 110 participants from universities and colleges. There were three tracks in the hackathon, one of which was dedicated to the Internet of Things.


Good-natured Panda - the unofficial symbol of the institute

The task of the track was to use a typical set of IoT equipment from the Samsung Academy and other components to develop a software and hardware complex for monitoring microclimate parameters (temperature, humidity, pressure, gas composition) in the spacecraft compartments. The teams had access to humidity and temperature sensors, gas analyzers, Samsung Artik 10 microcomputers; on assignment, the components of the monitoring system had to be separated in space, which meant they had to be connected wirelessly - for this, WiFi and LoRa communication modules were issued. The system was supposed to display graphs of changes in indicators, to warn about the parameters leaving the permissible limits, to have a convenient user interface.


We destroy stereotypes that electronics are not female

The goals of the hackathon were:


For many, this was the first such experience. Students wondered whether to participate, whether they would “pull” the assignment.

For example, the photo below shows a “space” interface to the system, created by a student of the Industrial Informatics Department Vyacheslav Starovoytov. Such a talent was discovered on the hackathon! But he doubted whether to participate. But the event took place, and he asked: “And when is the next hackathon?”



Returning to the main topic of the article - the need to unite efforts on the part of different departments, areas of training and profiles. Hackathon showed that this is true: the guys themselves began to declare mixed, multidisciplinary teams to participate. And the work clearly revealed the advantage of the division of labor: someone draws the interface, someone programs the backend, someone understands the connection of sensors.


On the hackathon, the students themselves began to form multidisciplinary teams!

Another interesting observation on the hackathon: students of 1-2 courses (who suddenly appeared on the IoT track in significant numbers), united into one big team, showed incredible enthusiasm (and, surprisingly, accuracy in the use of technology). They did not have enough experience and knowledge compared to the older participants, but in general they looked decent.

As a result, the idea came up next year as an experiment to allow 2nd year students to study under the IoT Samsung Academy program. But the initial calculation for bachelors of the 4th course showed that students are simply overwhelmed: pre-diploma practice, diploma, state examinations - in such conditions it is difficult to allocate time to attend elective, even if very interesting and useful.


Large junior junior team

Our plans in MIREA


For the next academic year, MIREA will again be in the role of a pilot site: at the initiative of the university, the course will be adapted to the level of students of MIREA college. Samsung welcomes the development of the program in accordance with the needs or priorities of a particular university.

Next year MIREA will recruit 5 groups of 15-20 people each. Colleagues believe that the competitive set justified itself - it turned out to provide more prepared and motivated guys. Although in the first year of the program many potentially good students “missed” this opportunity, which they later regretted. The rumor about the course has already spread throughout MIREA. And if the first set still did not really understand what awaits them, then it seems that next year the guys will make an informed choice, they will already have a focus on the results and projects of the previous set.

In the first year, the teachers did a great job: just like the students learned a new course for themselves, they gave the authors an active feedback. All the results we analyzed and prepare the course in the new version. We hope our students will appreciate the changes positively!

Conclusion


Unexpected effect! The “IoT Samsung Academy” course became for the Institute of Information Technologies MIREA a unifying platform - an activity that gathered not only students from various departments, areas and training profiles, but also young teachers from various departments. The IoT Academy is gradually becoming the center of consolidation of people who have chosen the Internet of Things as an area of ​​their professional and scientific interests. Self-organizing mechanisms turned on by themselves, which means everything is done right.

This is the moment when the Internet of things has become the “Internet of people”.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/412697/

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