IMPROVING THE PHYSICS LABORATORY EXPERIENCE THROUGH SENSORS ON A WIRELESS OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE PLATFORM César Llamas 1 , Manuel A. González 2 , Miguel A. González Rebollo 3 , Jesús M. Vegas 1 1 Department of Informatics (University of Valladolid) (SPAIN) 2 Department of Applied Physics (University of Valladolid) (SPAIN) 3 Department of Physics of Condensed Matter (University of Valladolid) (SPAIN) Abstract This paper describes an open source hardware and software platform devised specifically to allow high school and undergraduate instructors to prepare new laboratory demonstrations and projects for kinematics and dynamics in an easy, affordable and extensible way. The platform consists of a computing portable station with static sensors and a microcontroller based mobile device small sensors embedded. The whole platform rely heavily on wireless technologies so the students could operate the platform with their own tablets or smartphones. To meet the open source requirements, all the components comply with open source restrictions and also the design documents and the source code are made publicly available to the education community. Therefore, there is not only an economical sensing alternative to current configurations of laboratories but an extensible system in which new requirements and sensors could be added covering new areas such as electronics, magnetism and thermodynamics. A user friendly web client permits the students to configure and perform measurements using an Internet connected smartphone or any portable computing device in a way that makes possible to the instructor to broaden the type and intensity of experiments. Keywords: Physics laboratory, STEM, sensor platform, open source hardware, open source software 1 INTRODUCTION Last four decades have seen a great advancement in the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) into the field of education. Topics like mobile learning, BYOD ( bring your own device), MOOC (massive open online courses) are common nowadays. Laboratories for teaching physics have been also on the spot of several efforts to bring hands-on practice to the students through the use of affordable sensor devices [1] [2] or even smartphones [3] [4]. Present technology of smartphones make possible to take advance of its numerous sensors (camera, microphone, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, antenna, etc.) currently included into physics demonstrations [3]. Nevertheless, the many benefits that such devices as smartphones present when used in a physics laboratory, there exists some other drawbacks concerning its use as measurement devices in the classroom or the teaching laboratory. Some of these are technical issues as the need to calibrate every sensor, the use of properly designed software and the variability in specifications for every brand and model [3]. Other problems arise from the possible misuse of the smartphones in the classroom and their possible disruptive effects. [5] [6] Since the introduction in the late ‘90 of the first open source hardware (OSH) systems, its use has been widely spreading through many areas such as automation, robotics, multimedia and also education. Research equipment is a field where OSH has much proved being profitable [7], taking advance of its good qualities like transparency, decentralization and participation. The list of open source hardware available is quite large, 1 comprising CPUs, boards, microcontrollers, GPUs, communication adapters and many other devices. Nowadays, creating our own electronics and hardware including 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_computing_hardware