Low-cost Board Research Articles

Rethinking the use of board games in neuroanatomy teaching: a complementary and low-cost tool to improve learning performance

The use of board games has enhanced the learning performance of several disciplines in undergraduate courses. Nevertheless, the high investments for its development have been considered a negative factor to incorporate this tool into curricula. Moreover, there is still some lack of evidence about the efficacy of this educational tool in learning of Neuroanatomy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the students' perception and the effectiveness of the use of low-cost board games as a complementary tool in the learning process of Neuroanatomy. 35 Physiotherapy students were divided into “control group” (traditional method) and “experimental group” (traditional method + “NeuroGame”) with 17 and 18 participants, respectively. A pre-test knowledge questionnaire was applied to both groups. In the experimental group, the games involved central nervous system macroscopy structures during three practical classes. Post-test knowledge questionnaire was applied to both groups. In addition, the experimental group answered a questionnaire of 20 items with 3 points of the Linkert scale, to evaluate the students' perception about the use of these games as a teaching strategy. The experimental group showed significant increase in performance during the post-test, when compared to the control group (P = 0.0212). According to the students, the “NeuroGame” was attractive, informative, it encouraged teamwork and modified their attitudes and perceptions on learning the discipline. Therefore, the “NeuroGame” constitute a low-cost and complementary method, which enhances the physiotherapy students’ learning of Neuroanatomy. It should be adopted into the curriculum of other educational institutions.

Tuner Loop Based on FPGA for Petra Cavity at TPS Booster Ring

The low-level radio frequency system of the Taiwan Photon Source, TPS, booster ring was replaced by the digital low-level RF system, DLLRF, in 2018. After that, the phase drift compensation loop for energy-saving operation and the tuner loop were also implemented in the DLLRF system sequentially. We used Altera-DE3 to build the core of DLLRF and handle the high-speed ADC/DAC procedure for RF signal sampling. As we con-sider the response time of the tuner, we choose an-other low-cost board, Altera-DE0-Nano, to develop the tuner loop for 5-Cell-Petra-Cavity. It has an eight-channel 12-bits-ADC, 150 ksps, ADC128S022, to detect the positions of two tuners and two transmitted powers sampled from two cells of the 5-Cell-Petra-Cavity for a power balance function. The phase information of for-ward power and cavity gap voltage will come from the Altera-DE3 to tell the tuner loop in the Altera-DE0-Nano whether the cavity is on resonance or not. The tuner loop controls the cavity to work not only at the resonance frequency but also with a balanced electric field distribution. This study presents the tuner loop’s architecture, including the locking resonance frequency and field balance functions. The performance of the field balance function is observed by the archive data of the two tuners positions and two transmit power signals.

Distributed Generation Control Using Ripple Signaling and a Multiprotocol Communication Embedded Device

Remotely performing real-time distributed generation control and a demand response is a basic aspect of the grid ancillary services provided by grid operators, both the transmission grid operators (TSOs) and distribution grid operators (DNOs), in order to ensure that voltage, frequency and power loads of the grid remain within safe limits. The stochastic production of electrical power to the grid from the distributed generators (DGs) from renewable energy sources (RES) in conjunction with the newly appeared stochastic demand consumers (i.e., electric vehicles) hardens the efforts of the DNOs to keep the grid’s operation within safe limits and prevent cascading blackouts while staying in compliance with the SAIDI and SAIFI indices during repair and maintenance operations. Also taking into consideration the aging of the existing grid infrastructure, and making it more prone to failure year by year, it is yet of great significance for the DNOs to have access to real-time feedback from the grid’s infrastructure—which is fast, has low-cost upgrade interventions, is easily deployed on the field and has a fast response potential—in order to be able to perform real-time grid management (RTGM). In this article, we present the development and deployment of a control system for DG units, with the potential to be installed easily to TSO’s and DNO’s substations, RES plants and consumers (i.e., charging stations of electric vehicles). This system supports a hybrid control mechanism, either via ripple signaling or through a network, with the latter providing real-time communication capabilities. The system can be easily installed on the electric components of the grid and can act as a gateway between the different vendors communication protocols of the installed electrical equipment. More specifically, a commercially available, low-cost board (Raspberry Pi) and a ripple control receiver are installed at the substation of a PV plant. The board communicates in real-time with a remote server (decision center) via a 5G modem and with the PV plants inverters via the Modbus protocol, which acquires energy production data and controls the output power of each inverter, while one of its digital inputs can be triggered by the ripple control receiver. The ripple control receiver receives on-demand signals with the HEDNO, triggering the digital input on the board. When the input is triggered, the board performs a predefined control command (i.e., lower the inverter’s power output to 50%). The board can also receive control commands directly from the remote server. The remote server receives real-time feedback of the acquired inverter data, the control signals from the ripple control receiver and the state and outcome of each performed control command.

Design and Characterization of a single-axis solar tracker system for Small Scale Parabolic trough collectors

ABSTRACT This paper introduces a detailed design and development of a solar tracker (ST) prototype for small-sized parabolic trough collectors (PTCs) with one degree of freedom. The PTCs are intended to produce industrial heat at a moderate temperature. The contribution of this work lies in its introduction of a new and optimized solar tracker, which prioritizes both accuracy and cost-efficiency in its design. This aspect was emphasized throughout the experimental investigation, along with a comparison of findings from existing literature. Therefore, the open-loop strategy based on the solar position algorithm (SPA) is adopted here to determine the tracking-elevation angle. A software algorithm is proposed and implemented in a control unit managed by low-cost board. Then, the tracking angle is updated by controlling the electro-mechanical system using an on-off hysteresis approach. An experimental characterization of the tracker is carried out regarding the tracking precision by directly measuring the errors in positioning angle and their impact on the optical losses. The obtained results show good performance of the tracker with a standard deviation of tracking errors of 0.55°, which is adequate for such collectors with tolerance angles of more than 2°. This makes the 96th percentile of the optical loss efficiency almost zero for our PTC.

NEP 2020: EMPOWERING TEACHER IN 21st CENTURY EDUCATION

The world is full of competition and achieving life goals requires capable, efficient and skilled teachers to help our future generations to achieve their long and short term life goals. Rather than blaming teachers for poor classroom learning outcomes in India, NEP 2020 attributes the dire state of teacher education, recruitment, turnover and working conditions to a lack of quality and motivation among teachers. Recognizing the `power of teachers`, NEP 2020 introduced institutional reforms to help `teaching` become an attractive profession for bright and talented youth. The report proposes several reforms to empower teachers and "restore dignity and prestige" to the profession, ultimately attracting the best minds and talent to teaching as a profession. NEP 2020 will focus on active pedagogy, development of core competencies and life skills including 21st century skills, experiential learning at all levels, low-cost board exams, comprehensive scorecards, and critical and advanced students. This paper emphasizes the fact that the ambitious goals of 21st century education can be achieved by empowering teachers in all aspects of quality education, career development, independence, performance and role expectations.

ROS System Facial Emotion Detection Using Machine Learning for a Low-Cost Robot Based on Raspberry Pi

Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a field of research with multiple solutions in the state-of-the-art, focused on fields such as security, marketing or robotics. In the literature, several articles can be found in which algorithms are presented from different perspectives for detecting emotions. More specifically, in those emotion detection systems in the literature whose computational cores are low-cost, the results presented are usually in simulation or with quite limited real tests. This article presents a facial emotion detection system—detecting emotions such as anger, happiness, sadness or surprise—that was implemented under the Robot Operating System (ROS), Noetic version, and is based on the latest machine learning (ML) techniques proposed in the state-of-the-art. To make these techniques more efficient, and that they can be executed in real time on a low-cost board, extensive experiments were conducted in a real-world environment using a low-cost general purpose board, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. The final achieved FER system proposed in this article is capable of plausibly running in real time, operating at more than 13 fps, without using any external accelerator hardware, as other works (widely introduced in this article) do need in order to achieve the same purpose.

Unmodeled-error-corrected stochastic assessment for a standalone GNSS receiver regardless of the number of tracked frequencies

Appropriate stochastic modeling is crucial to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) applications. However, traditional methods based on the zero baseline and ultra-short baseline cannot accurately estimate the stochastic characteristics of GNSS measurements of a complete receiving system, i.e., receiver, antenna, low-noise amplifier, and cable. We propose the unmodeled-error-corrected stochastic assessment methods that can be used for a standalone receiver regardless of the number of tracked frequencies. First, the raw observation equations considering the unmodeled errors are deduced based on the geometry-free or geometry-based model. Second, some parameters are chosen as the datum for rank deficiency elimination. Third, the multi-epoch parameterization is used to correct the unmodeled errors in the reparametrized observation model. Finally, the covariance component estimation can be applied to determine the variance components. Three different and representative measurement campaigns were conducted, including the low-cost board, integrated receiver, and smart phone. The results show that the proposed method based on a standalone receiver can assess the stochastic characteristics of GNSS measurements. Since the stochastic characteristics of different low-cost receivers share different patterns, and the noise from the internal antenna cannot be easily ignored, the proposed method is essential.

Low Power Environmental Image Sensors for Remote Photogrammetry.

This paper aims to prove the feasibility of a 4D monitoring solution (3D modeling and temporal monitoring) for the sandbar and to characterize the species’ role in the landscape. The developed solution allows studying the interaction between the river dynamics and vegetation using a network of low resolution and low power sensors. The issues addressed concern the feasibility of implementing a photogrammetry solution using low-resolution sensors as well as the choice of the appropriate sensor and its testing according to different configurations (image capture and storage on the sensor and/or image transmission to a centralization node) and also the detailed analysis of the different phases of the process (camera initialization, image capture, network transmission and selection of the most appropriate standby mode). We reveal that the tiny, low-cost board (ESP32-Cam) can perform a 3D reconstruction and propose using the camera’s UXGA (1600, 1200) resolution because of the quality rendering and energy consumption. A multi-node scenario based on a combined Wi-Fi and GSM relay is proposed in the study showing several years of autonomy for the system. Finally, to illustrate the energy cost of the module, we have defined a study process, where we have identified and quantified one by one the different phases of operation of the card for better energy optimization (setup, camera configuration, shooting, saving on SD card, or sending by Wi-Fi). The device is now operational for deployment on the Allier River (France).

Meal-Monitoring Systems Using Weight and Temperature Sensors for Elder Residents in Long-Term Care Facilities.

This paper presents a few meal-monitoring systems for elder residents (especially patients) in LTCFs by using electronic weight and temperature sensors. These monitoring systems enable to convey the information of the amount of meal taken by the patients in real-time via wireless communication networks onto the mobile phones of their nurses in charge or families. Thereby, the nurses can easily spot the most patients who need immediate assistance, while the families can have relief in seeing the crucial information for the well-being of their parents at least three times a day. Meanwhile, the patients tend to suffer burns of their tongues because they can hardly recognize the temperature of hot meals served. This situation can be avoided by utilizing the meal temperature-monitoring system, which displays an alarm to the patients when the meal temperature is above the reference. These meal-monitoring systems can be easily implemented by utilizing low-cost sensor chips and Arduino NANO boards so that elder-care hospitals and nursing homes can afford to exploit them with no additional cost. Hence, we believe that the proposed monitoring systems would be a potential solution to provide a great help and relief for the professional nurses working in elder-care hospitals and nursing homes.

A flexible system-on-a-chip control hardware for atomic, molecular, and optical physics experiments.

We have implemented a control system core for experiments in atomic, molecular, and optical physics based on a commercial low-cost board, featuring a field-programmable gate array as part of a system-on-a-chip on which a Linux operating system is running. The board features Gigabit Ethernet, allowing for fast data transmission and operation of remote experimental systems. A single board can control a set of devices generating digital, analog, and radio frequency signals with precise timing given either by an external or internal clock. Contiguous output and input sampling rates of up to 40MHz are achievable. Several boards can run synchronously with a timing error approaching 1ns. For this purpose, a novel auto-synchronization scheme is demonstrated, with possible application in complex distributed experimental setups with demanding timing requests.

Automatic Control System for Hybrid Electrical Energy Supply Based on Internet of Things

The utilization of renewable energy is slowly starting to become one thing that to be interesting inside the development of science technology. The utilization of renewable energy is from at least two renewable energy (Solar Power Plants and Wind Power Plants), State Electricity Enterprise (PLN), and Generator Sources. This device could be operated automatically and integrated on the internet, which has a monitoring system such as voltage, inside which will be used to control everything inside that system. This device is designed to be operated in a combinational manner. This means to be operated based on the voltage value which qualified to activate the load. The utilization of the 3.3V microcontroller is able to design an efficient and low-cost board. Besides that, the device also uses the PLN and Generator set sources as the power backup when the main power runs out. Base on the research noted, this device will distribute the electric source to the houses, which means beneficial for the local society. This device might be applied automatically to four different sources with C++ Programming language to set the point value.

Nekray

In recent years, the demand of kiosk devices has increased significantly for relaying information in organizations, institutions, or any other service centers. They have become a better alternative for traditional human assistance or reception desks. However, there are no dynamic operating systems or user interfaces available for kiosk devices. This paper represents a development of an operating system for kiosk devices called ‘Nekray', which was built on Linux Kernel environment. It was designed to be dynamic, fast, user-friendly, and user interactive. The developed operating system avails the option to change the data of its features as per requirement. It also supports plug and play feature and can be installed in any low-cost hardware board. Furthermore, built-in AI is also a part of the developed system that performs its features through image processing. The system maintains the privacy and interactive transition of data to its users on kiosk devices.

Automated Low Investment Cost Evaporometers (ALICEs)

Evaporation is an important part of the hydrological cycle. This paper discusses the materials and methods we used to develop an evaporometer, which measures evaporation from the water surface, like a drop in water level. The main problem is that there are relatively small differences in the levels measured directly in the field. During the research, we tested conductive filament and stainless steel as measuring electrode materials. We used 3D printing in combination with low-cost open-source electronics and a hand-etched circuit board to make a device which measures the free water surface level. A 3D printed jig is used when assembling the device, and this ensures that the contact electrodes are set precisely. Another 3D printed jig is used to create the etched circuit board, which holds all the electronic devices. The device uses the low-cost open-source Arduino Uno electronics microcontroller board. Our results show that high-precision measurements can be gathered with the use of open-source electronics in 3D printed housing. The device is also durable and easy to maintain.

PICUS: A Pocket-Sized System for Simple and Fast Non-Destructive Evaluation of the Detachments in Ancient Artifacts

An innovative, robust method has been developed, based on the use of a simple, compact, expressly designed device, named PICUS (the ‘woodpecker’ in ancient Latin), and inspired by the auscultation method carried out by the experts in the field of conservation of cultural heritage. This method entails gently knocking the surface, controlling and measuring the impact time of the stroke’s force, recording the generated sound, comparing the acquired sound with a reference sound by calculating the cross-correlation function, and its maximum, as a measure of the detachment. In a nutshell, it performs an analysis similar to that carried out by a professional who performs a routine examination on the detachments by hand. The experimental apparatus consists of a probe made of an electromechanical percussion element that gently taps the surface producing a sound, a force sensor purposely developed to measure the impact force, and a microphone, all connected with an Arduino-like low cost board, to record and elaborate the sounds and the force sensor signal. The probe XY position on the scene is recognized using an infra-red (IR) system with a low-cost IR camera and an IR light-emitting diode (IR-LED) positioned on the probe. The “tapper” and the microphone replace the hand and the ear of a conservator carrying out a detachment investigation, while the comparison with a reference is the typical mind process of a professional restorer. The result is the fusion of the microphone data and the force sensor data.

A distributed source autoencoder of local visual descriptors for 3D reconstruction

• Application of a deep learning to the compression of local visual descriptors. • Combination of distributed source coding and autoencoders. • Definition of a low-complexity encoder suitable for mobile low-cost boards. • Competitive compression and reconstruction performances w.r.t existing solutions. • Optimization of the coding scheme for 3D scene reconstruction applications. This paper presents a local descriptor coding scheme for multicamera surveillance and 3D reconstruction embedding an autoencoder into a traditional distributed source coding strategy. The proposed solution permits shifting most of the computational complexity at the decoder/receiver and exploiting the correlation among descriptors of different cameras (thus reducing the coded bit rate) without increasing the inter-device communication load. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme permits obtaining a satisfying accuracy with respect to the most recent solutions while generating a limited bit rate.

An FPGA Based Tracking Implementation for Parkinson's Patients.

This paper presents a study on the optimization of the tracking system designed for patients with Parkinson’s disease tested at a day hospital center. The work performed significantly improves the efficiency of the computer vision based system in terms of energy consumption and hardware requirements. More specifically, it optimizes the performances of the background subtraction by segmenting every frame previously characterized by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM). This module is the most demanding part in terms of computation resources, and therefore, this paper proposes a method for its implementation by means of a low-cost development board based on Zynq XC7Z020 SoC (system on chip). The platform used is the ZedBoard, which combines an ARM Processor unit and a FPGA. It achieves real-time performance and low power consumption while performing the target request accurately. The results and achievements of this study, validated in real medical settings, are discussed and analyzed within.

Low-Cost Automation for Gravity Compensation of Robotic Arm

During the Industry 4.0 era, the open source-based robotic arms control applications have been developed, in which the control algorithms apply for movement precision in the trajectory tracking paths based on direct or reverse kinematics. Therefore, small errors in the joint positions can summarize in large position errors of the end-effector in the industrial activities. Besides the change of the end-effector position for a given variation of the set-point in manipulator joint positions depends on the manipulator configuration. This research proposes a control based on Proportional Derivative (PD) Control with gravity compensation to show the robustness of this control scheme in the robotic arm’s industrial applications. The control algorithm is developed using a low-cost board like Raspberry Pi (RPI) where the Robot Operating System (ROS) is installed. The novelty of this approach is the development of new functions in ROS to make the PD control with gravity compensation in low-cost systems. This platform brings a fast exchange of information between the Kuka™ youBot robotic arm and a graphical user’s interface that allows a transparent interaction between them.

BIPES: Block Based Integrated Platform for Embedded Systems

This article proposes the BIPES, a <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">B</b> lock based <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">I</b> ntegrated <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">P</b> latform for <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">E</b> mbedded <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S</b> ystems, including its architecture, design and validation results. BIPES is an open source software and service that is freely available through the website <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">http://www.bipes.net.br</uri> and has been conceived from our experience of several years developing embedded systems and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and teaching. It allows anyone to quickly and reliably design, program, build, deploy and monitor embedded systems, IoT devices and applications using blocks or Python based programming. It is fully based on web environment, so absolutely no software installation is needed on the client developer machine. In this way, a tablet, a netbook, a Chromebook or any other device can be used to program and test several types of devices. Mainly, it relies on MicroPython or CircuitPython, WebREPL, WebSockets, Web Serial API, HTML, JavaScript and Google Blockly to allow no-code programming (blocks) to be translated into Python code and then deployed to the target board. Moreover, it does not require server side processing, so it can be deployed as a Progressive Web Application (PWA), allowing it to be used even when the computer is offline. It is compatible with several low cost boards such as: mBed, BBC micro:bit, ESP8266, ESP32 and Raspberry Pi using only a web browser and without the need to install any software on the device where the user develops the programming.

An Arduino board with ultrasonic sensor investigation of simple harmonic motion

An Arduino, one of the most popular microcontroller platforms, is widely used in teaching and learning STEM. It is really open source software and hardware, huge community, low cost boards and peripherals, and simple programming language. This research aims to develop an Arduino-based physics investigation of the simple harmonic motion (SHM) of mass on a spring. This rich cross curricular STEM activity integrates electronics, computer programming, physics, and mathematics in a way that is both experimentally exciting and intellectually rewarding. The experimental data are collected with the help of an HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor and an Arduino Uno board. The data are then graphed and analysed using Microsoft Excel in real-time. The experiment data can be used to investigate Hooke’s law. The elastic constant of the spring, k = 16.54 N/m, is very close to the value determined from the period of the SHM. This Arduino-based investigation of SHM can be helped the students to improve both their experimental and theoretical skills.

A Reference Architecture for Secure Medical Devices.

We propose a reference architecture aimed at supporting the safety and security of medical devices. The ISOSCELES (Intrinsically Secure, Open, and Safe Cyber-Physically Enabled, Life-Critical Essential Services) architecture is justified by a collection of design principles that leverage recent advances in software component isolation based on hypervisor and other separation technologies. The instantiation of the architecture for particular medical devices is supported by a development process based on Architecture Analysis and Design Language. The architecture models support safety and security analysis as part of a broader risk management framework. The models also can be used to derive skeletons of the device software and to configure the platform's separation policies and an extensive set of services. We are developing prototypes of the architecture and example medical device instantiations on low-cost boards that can be used in product solutions. The prototype and supporting development and assurance artifacts are being released under an open-source license.