Thread by @theVujaklija

This week was both very intense and very rewarding as we successfully completed our first #RemoteTeaching exercises on #EmbeddedElectronics. It was really cool to see students doing some #Arduino programming from their homes on the physical systems at @AaltoUniversity 🧵(1/9)

The exercises are a part of a course on Translational Engineering, so they had to be of a more general/informative nature and to be tailored for a group of master students (not all currently in Finland) with very heterogeneous background (bit.ly/3nYTzO5) (2/9)

So, the tricky goal was to set up a remotely accessible user-friendly system able to read, display, and interpret data from accelerometers attached to a prosthetic hand that opens/closes at various speeds (Why hand? Cause it is cool and it leans towards my research) (3/9)

With this arrangement students had a chance to go through the process of programming a microcontroller, handle its different inputs, see the demands of real-time data handling (sampling speeds, sensor sensitivity, data sizes,...), and get familiar with data visualization (4/9)

The exercises were conducted in groups of 4-5 students with each group getting a remote (desktop) access to a #RaspberryPi in my office (yes, it was loud and warm). From there, they were able to run Arduino IDE and program their microcontroller which had an ADXL345 wired in (5/9)

Group work was facilitated through #zoom, where students were divided across breakout rooms. A parallel #twitch stream was running allowing them to have a view of the physical setup and observe any changes in the arrangement (rate of hand closing) as they were happening (6/9)

The session went smoothly and there were no hardware hiccups (#success). Students, even those quite familiar with the embedded system design, seemed rather engaged and excited. We were able to have a productive time and spark up a few discussions (7/9)

Couldn't you have used simulators? Yes, but I believe that this was much more engaging and it allowed for a more tangible learning experience. Essentially, we got students across Finland and those abroad to actively participate side-by-side on a "live" hardware project (8/9)

Pfff! Could have done this better...
Sure, but it was super fun and it delivered! Still, I would like to use ESP32 in future, wire in some actuators, give more detailed instructions on how to play with the setup, and ask for initial login to be done before the session (9/9)