RHL-Butterfly: A Scalable IoT-Based Digital Twinning Platform for Embedded Systems and Remote Laboratories

Abstract

The RHL-Butterfly is a digital twin of a breadboard designed for use with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and microcontrollers in educational remote engineering laboratories and engineering education, aimed at providing greater flexibility and fostering equity in learning opportunities. This study introduces a novel server-side approach for simulating breadboard circuits using microcontroller backends, enhancing computational efficiency, and offering open-source transparency. The system interfaces the digital twin with a network of physical, remote FPGAs and microcontrollers and introduces a scalable communication protocol system that converts the graphical breadboard layout into a one-dimensional (1D) string representation for network communication. This custom protocol facilitates seamless integration with various digital twinning applications, ensuring a balance between virtualized interfaces and physical hardware and expanding the scalability and accessibility of engineering labs. Survey responses and feedback from students using the system in their course studies have been encouraging. Students particularly appreciate the equitable nature of the system and its similarity to a traditional physical breadboard.