Due to the emergence of the coronavirus disease (COVID 19), education systems in most countries have adapted and quickly changed their teaching strategy to online teaching. This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel Internet of Things (IoT) device, called MEIoT weather station, which incorporates an exogenous disturbance input, within the National Digital Observatory of Smart Environments (OBNiSE) architecture. The exogenous disturbance input involves a wind blower based on a DC brushless motor. It can be controlled, via Node-RED platform, manually through a sliding bar, or automatically via different predefined profile functions, modifying the wind speed and the wind vane sensor variables. An application to Engineering Education is presented with a case study that includes the instructional design for the least-squares regression topic for linear, quadratic, and cubic approximations within the Educational Mechatronics Conceptual Framework (EMCF) to show the relevance of this proposal. This work’s main contribution to the state-of-the-art is to turn a weather monitoring system into a hybrid hands-on learning approach thanks to the integrated exogenous disturbance input.

As the development of systems in smart homes is increasing, it is of ever-increasing importance to have data, which artificial intelligence methods and techniques can apply to recognize activities and patterns or to detect anomalies, with the aim of reducing energy consumption in the main home domestic services, and to offer users an alternative in the management of these resources. This paper describes the design and implementation of a platform based on the internet of things and a cloud environment that allows the user to remotely control and monitor Wi-Fi wireless e-switch in a home through a mobile application. This platform is intended to represent the first step in transforming a home into a smart home, and it allows the collection and storage of the e-switch information, which can be used for further processing and analysis.

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Boosting by the world’s context, several efforts have been maiden toward the digital transformation of Education. Technology-based active learning has become pivotal in pursuing a more flexible education system. This work presents the development of an Educational Mechatronics (EM) training system based on computer vision that performs as a positioning system for mobile robots in the 2D plane. The results show that the obtained precision, exactitude, and resolution of the EM training system are suitable for robotics applications comprising position, velocity, and acceleration variables. Moreover, an instructional design aligned with the EM conceptual framework, using the EM training system and a LEGO mobile robot, is presented to construct the mechatronic concept: line segment.

Within Industry 4.0, drones appear as intelligent devices that have brought a new range of innovative applications to the industrial sector. The required knowledge and skills to manage and appropriate these technological devices are not being developed in most universities. This paper presents an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based smart educational mechatronics system that makes use of a motion capture (MoCap) laboratory and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) to teach UAV knowledge and skills, within the Educational Mechatronics Conceptual Framework (EMCF). The macro-process learning construction of the EMCF includes concrete, graphic, and abstract levels. The system comprises a DJI Phantom 4, a MoCap laboratory giving the drone location, a Simulink drone model, and an embedded system for performing the HIL simulation. The smart educational mechatronics system strengthens the assimilation of the UAV waypoint navigation concept and the capacity for drone flight since it permits the validation of the physical drone model and testing of the trajectory tracking control. Moreover, it opens up a new range of possibilities in terms of knowledge construction through best practices, activities, and tasks, enriching the university courses.

Industry 4.0 involves various areas of engineering such as advanced robotics, Internet of Things, simulation, and augmented reality, which are focused on the development of smart factories. The present work presents the design and application of the methodology for the development of augmented reality applications (MeDARA) using a concrete, pictorial, and abstract approach with the intention of promoting the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the students within the conceptual framework of educational mechatronics (EMCF). The flight of a drone is presented as a case study, where the concrete level involves the manipulation of the drone in a simulation; the graphic level requires the elaboration of an experiential storyboard that shows the scenes of the student’s interaction with the drone in the concrete level; and finally, the abstract level involves the planning of user stories and acceptance criteria, the computer design of the drone, the mock-ups of the application, the coding in Unity and Android Studio, and its integration to perform unit and acceptance tests. Finally, evidence of the tests is shown to demonstrate the results of the application of the MeDARA.

The educational sector has made extraordinary efforts to neutralize the impact of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, forcing teachers, scholars, and academic personnel to change the way education is delivered by developing creative and technological solutions to improve the landscape for education. The Internet of Things (IoT) is crucial for the educational transition to digital and virtual environments. This paper presents the integration of IoT technology in the Two-Dimensional Cartesian Coordinate System Educational Toolkit (2D-CACSET), to transform it into MEIoT 2D-CACSET; which includes educational mechatronics and the IoT. The Educational Mechatronics Conceptual Framework (EMCF) is extended to consider the virtual environment, enabling knowledge construction in virtual concrete, virtual graphic, and virtual abstract levels. Hence, the students acquire this knowledge from a remote location to apply it further down their career path. Three instructional designs are designed for this work using the MEIoT 2D-CACSET to learn about coordinate axes, quadrants, and a point in the 2D Coordinate Cartesian System. This work is intended to provide an IoT educational technology to offer an adequate response to the educational system’s current context.

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