Remote robotics development for university students isn’t a pipe dream — it’s very real at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. In the latest issue of The MagPi, Rob Zwetsloot connects with RemoteLab. As a special #MagPiMonday treat, we’re sharing it with you here.

A few issues ago we spoke to Wojciech Domski about his RC plane OSD, a cool little project allowing him to see where his RC plane was flying, along with a little HUD of info. While impressive, he’s also been working on a project with Wrocław University for a very long time that he has been very keen to share with us.

A variety of development boards are accessible via RemoteLab — including Nucleo boards and Discovery boards from ST

“RemoteLab is something known as Hardware-as-a-Service,” Wojciech explains. “It offers remote access to resources such as development boards via means of services. It is located at Wrocław University of Science and Technology [WRUST], where it is used for Robot Controller and Advanced Robot Control classes.”

RemoteLab came from necessity — in 2020, in-person classes were suspended at WRUST due to the COVID pandemic, much like the rest of the world. With students unable to access real development boards (and the labs they were in), Wojciech started building a way to access boards remotely via Raspberry Pi.

“In late 2020 I had a first version up and running at home,” Wojciech says. “In 2021 I was able to set up the environment and launch the service. It would not be possible without support from my university and the people from [private company] ST who provided the development boards.”

The web interface includes a camera so you can monitor the boards

The initial build used a Raspberry Pi 3, with the balance of low power consumption and high hardware performance, coupled with a well-supported Linux distro, making it the ideal candidate.

“The performance was enough to serve the resources to over a dozen students at the same time,” Wojciech tells us. “However, the video streaming offering a view over development boards was not that good. I needed to work around it and decided to use video-like preview based on still images. The next generation included an upgrade to Raspberry Pi 4. Now, it was even possible to work and develop code directly on Raspberry Pi since it offered enough computation power. Finally, in 2024 yet another upgrade took place. Three servers were replaced with Raspberry Pi 5s. In addition, a new and refreshed version of the web interface was available. Based on my experiments, Raspberry Pi 5 should be even able to stream real video feedback to an entire class of my students.”

Fraught development

We like to ask every maker how the build process was. Wojciech’s answer was a blunt “it was horrible :D”, with that exact emoticon.

One of the development boards used in RemoteLab

“I do not want to count the amount of time I have spent during evenings to set up the hardware,” Wojciech admits. “Preparing software is one thing, you can gradually add new features, revert changes if needed. With hardware, you need to have a plan that you carefully follow… What I remember the most was connecting additional hardware, like sensors, to the development boards. It took me something around three days to set it up and test it.”

We’ve all been there with the frustration of a build. In the end, he did manage to get it all working, though. Users merely need to connect to the RemoteLab server via SSH and, via the web interface, they can see the status of, and control, the development boards in the lab. Oh yes, and now get video feedback as well, thanks to the upgrade to Raspberry Pi 5.

Remote learning

With any project like this, it’s important to get feedback from the end user too, and it seems to be a hit with the students.

“Some students really loved the RemoteLab and said that it helped them a lot,” Wojciech says. “What was groundbreaking was that the system was available around the clock. I received a lot of feedback that students were able to prepare better for classes, and they were not limited by any time constraints.”

Prototyping can be a laborious task — this wiring was a tedious and meticulous job

Wojciech is still working on the system, as he has been for the last several years, with improvements in mind — a serial console via the web interface was just added, and he’s looking at real-time plotting next. He’s also thinking of expanding to a fourth Raspberry Pi server and adding support for Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico 2.

“I think that RemoteLab exactly represents what the Raspberry Pi Foundation is standing for,” Wojciech finishes. “It is all about supporting education and encouraging people to tinker.”

How it works

1. Two ports are tunnelled via SSH from the user to the server, with the web UI on one port. From here you can check the status of a development board, if the debugger is running, and other features.

2. The second port is dedicated to the debugger — openocd or st-link — and is connected via an SWD interface like on Raspberry Pi Pico. Remote debugging allows for new firmware to be uploaded to the development board, or debugging of the source code on the board.

3. The administrator side is a little more complex, with web servers managing the functions described above. A set of Python scripts was created to automate repeating tasks (like updating code) on one or all servers that are a part of any given RemoteLab setup.

The MagPi #145 out NOW!

You can grab the new issue right now from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available at our online store, which ships around the world. You can also get it via our app on Android or iOS.

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