Building University IoT Labs for Professional IoT Applications Development training utilizing IoT Educational and Innovation Labs

Last update: 2025, Jan. 27

In this article, I’m summarizing our successful experience in building IoT Labs. By the beginning?of 2022, we have now built 10 IoT Labs. These labs are targeting computer science and computer engineering colleges for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Please note that an IoT Lab is not an embedded systems lab because those are totally 2 different things.

Why should a university have an IoT Lab ?

In a university or educational institution, you are teaching your students the science and technology they should use while doing their jobs during their career. Today lots of jobs are built around IoT (Internet of Things) solutions and IoT became a basic component in our live and your students must know how to build these IoT solution otherwise they would not be fitting for the jobs and hence your university should cope with the changes in the technologies especially if you would like to offer high quality education and engage your students into the practical IoT solutions they will face after graduation in their daily jobs.

Having an IoT Lab will also enable your university or educational institution to offer post graduate professional trainings as well. Your university could offer/extend these courses to the professional community for tech companies in the nearby or in the surrounding of your university.

To evaluate the impact on your students, here is a link to Facebook page for Egypt IoT Labs where you can see how students are engaged and enjoying the learning experience offered by the IoT Labs.

https://fb.com/EgyptIotLab/

Curriculum enhancements the university would offer by having an IoT lab.

A professional IoT Educational and Innovation Lab enables the educational organizations (Hi Tech institutions or universities) or professional training service provider to offer practical IoT Professional training curriculum with practical hands-on courses with total number of hours that ranges from 72 hours to 270 hours including but not limited to the below list of courses. Some of those courses can be delivered in an online environment (over zoom or Microsoft teams) and some courses need to be delivered inside the IoT lab itself in a class-based learning environment.

Hands-on IoT applications development offered through Expert IoT lab.

• IoT Value chain (devices, LPWAN wireless technologies, gateways, carrier networks, application enablement platforms, analytics platforms, device management platforms).
• IoT Applications Development utilizing @MasterOfThings IoT AEP (MQTT protocol understanding, device authentication, application development practices, access rights management, data visualization, etc.).
• IoT Lab hands-on devices (practice the use and configuration of various IoT devices and innovation kits, configuring the IoT Gateways, complement end to end solution).
• Autonomous/self-driving cars application development. Those applications that is able to remotely monitor and control the cars.
• Advanced IoT Applications development for developing cars on board applications by utilizing the utilizing @MasterOfThings IoT AEP (customizing your backend events on the cloud).
• Managing a fleet of Autonomous/self-driving cars application development.

IoT Device prototyping and development (targeting computer engineering students).

• Introduction to embedded systems.
• IoT Prototyping and development boards.
• Developing IoT device prototype.

What exactly should be available inside an IoT Lab ?

Your IoT lab should have all the IoT Value Chain components including IoT Innovation Kits (ready to use not just Arduino or similar prototyping boards), Commercial IoT Devices, IoT Gateways for various wireless technologies (including SigFox, LoRaWan, BLE, WiFi, etc.), IoT Educational maket as well as IoT Application Enablement Platform that represents the most important component for application developers and system integrators where your students will practice building these IoT use cases . All those lab components are gathered together in an educational environment for learning as well as having samples for live demonstration for commercial live use cases that are provided with its source code for educational purpose. Those should be offered with the curriculum on how to develop various IoT use cases. Please note that an IoT Lab is not an embedded systems lab because those are totally 2 different things. As Embedded systems labs focus on building the devices while IoT Labs are focusing on building the completed end-to-end IoT solution which is more focused on software development on top of an IoT AEP (Application Enablement Platform) running the cloud, wireless communication alternatives and data visualization and remote decision making by the software running on the IoT AEP.?

Labs are dimensioned with enough number of devices with replicas of devices and gateways to serve up from 15 to 20 concurrent students with the instructor/teaching assistant.

Here is a one-hour detailed tutorial session on the lab setup as presented in FAMECSE 2022 event

in this tutorial session I have explained and detailed all IoT Value Chain components that should be available inside a professional IoT Educational and Innovation Lab including IoT Innovation Kits, Commercial IoT Devices, IoT Gateways for various wireless technologies (including SigFox, LoRaWan, BLE, WiFi, etc.) as well as IoT Application Enablement Platform that represents the most important component for application developers and system integrators and we will explain how those components are all gathered together in an educational environment for learning as well as a commercial live environment for live demonstration.

In the session we had lots of nice good questions and good discussion with the audience on how to have IoT labs in their countries? in their universities? How IoT labs can generate money for the lab operational expenses? Should IoT labs be updated periodically ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs6t-NQqIcg&t=849s

Here is a live tour inside one of our IoT Labs in iTi (Information Technology Institute)

In the below video, I take you in a quick tour inside the IoT Lab in iTi so you can see the lab setup and what would be the best location to have your lab inside your organization building. As you will notice It is best to have the lab in the ground floor to be able to see use cases outside the lab in the surrounding street, in the garden, etc.

https://youtu.be/eQ_Bw5dK4S0

How much the lab costs and how can I get a fund for an IoT Lab ?

The IoT Labs are offered in 3 levels. The 1st basic level can cost from 20 k Euros up to 50 K Euros, the 2nd level costs up to 200 K Euros and the most advanced/premium level costs around 350 K Euros. The actual cost will vary depending on your planned university lab location (country) where shipment and taxes would vary from country to country.

What if your university can not afford that amount of money for some reason specially if you are running a governmental university with free education where your students are not paying a tuition fee?

In this case, ?we have collaborated (as the industrial partner) with some universities in a collaborative funding project where university can get a funding for the IoT lab from a research funding organization that are opening calls for collaborative funding proposals for labs in cooperation with an industrial partner. Those funding organizations are available everywhere in the world (i.e. in Europe you have H2020, in Spain you have CDTI, in Arab countries you have ASTF and in Egypt we have ASRT, STDF, ITAC, etc.).

You can get funding for IoT Labs by collaborating with the Ministry of Information and communication technology in your country or seek funds from the ministry of higher education in your country. Those ministries will help you by funding the IoT Labs because these IoT Labs will help your students to have better jobs and those jobs are going to generate money back to the whole country out of exporting those services and jobs that your students will learn.

You can also get funds from your telecom regulatory authority as usually those regulatory authorities have parts of their licensing regulation fees directed to funding the setup of labs for educational and research purposes.

Interested to build your university IoT Lab or become our local partner in your country ?

Contact us in SpimeSenseLabs or reach us by Email to [email protected] and we would be happy to help you.

#IoT #innovation #lab #university #education