Educational kit or training tools or prototyping machines have defined itself as a very essential part of modern electronics industry and education system. Today’s educational kits are designed delicately for specific application area, like microprocessor based design, IoT or robotics. With the increasing trend towards such kits, requirements are coming up for vast application areas, advanced designing & testing capabilities, upgradable modules and price competitiveness. In this article ahead we have tried to figure out some of the major market trends in education kits.
Educational kits can be defined as simple educational tools for anyone wishing to start learning how to work with microcontrollers, PCBs or circuits or for hobbyists to build DIY robots. Educational kit have several benefits to be named as, Innovative Solutions, Fast Turnaround, Cost Effectiveness, Fast / Easy Project Scope Development, Provide key support to small or reduced in-house engineering staff on an as needed basis. Today’s educational kits, finds wide applications in various educational institutes and knowledge based industries like, Engineering Colleges, Polytechnics, I.T.I., Science Colleges and R&D Centers differentiated as Digital/Analog Trainer Kit, Basic Electronics Trainer Kit, Power Supply Function Generator IC Tester, EPROM Programmer Microprocessor Trainer Kit, Microcontroller Trainer Kit, Embedded Development Board VLSI Trainer Kit, Interface and Study Cards, Communication Trainer Kit, Analog communication trainer kit, digital communication trainer kit, advance communication trainer kit, fiber optics trainer kit, Instrumentation Trainer Kit, Instrumentation & Controls Lab Trainer Microwave Trainer. Educational kits, helps in conceptualizing, designing & developing various types of products as per the specific needs & requirements of the users. Preceding article highlighted some of the driving trends of educational kits in Indian electronics market and future insight. The thrust on hands-on experience of engineering aspirants reinforces the sizeable need for educational kits. The sales of hobby kits in India are already going up and, in fact, these are a craze amongst budding engineers as well as electronics hobbyists.
Indian Market Trends
The education market is a market that is ever evolving and making progress. Like most industries, education is also subject to trends. These trends may cause a positive or negative impact and should be carefully assessed to figure out what is best for student engagement and success. The education market has witnessed a lot trends that have successfully made their way into the industries, Hobbyists, colleges and industries. In we talk about educational kits prospects in industries, the current speed of change means that employees need to be trained continuously in order for Companies to avoid the dangers of being outthought and out-maneuvered by competitors. Educational kits, market will show fast and significant growth over the next three years. The worldwide market for educational kits was calculated to be $35.6 billion in 2011. The fiveyear compound annual growth rate is estimated at around 7.6% so revenues should reach some $51.5 billion by 2016. While the aggregate growth rate is 7.6%, several world regions appear to have significantly higher growth rates. According to recent regional studies, the highest growth rate is in Asia at 17.3%, followed by Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America at 16.9%, 15.2%, and 14.6%, respectively. A major influential factor in growing trends to electronics kits is the Cloud computing and wireless communication that is changing the way Organizations, Employees and Partners interact and collaborate. Within the Cloud solutions universe, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is playing a major role. According to Gartner, SaaS will continue to experience healthy growth through 2014 and 2015, when worldwide revenue is projected to reach around $22 billion. Working on cloud or communicating on IoT, it is next to impossible to bring different aspects of a organization like, designer, programmer, production person, approving authority are more to be at same place and in cases these could be across the globe. Comprehensive training kits, makes it possible to training overseas field engineers, trainees about high end products and case-studies, without actually going there or setting up an entire infrastructure.
Modern Educational Kits: New Era, New Requirements & New Challenges
Educational or training kits that enable to design a trainer or designer a circuit that could be based on Internet of Things, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, Body Electronics, Chassis and Safety, Infotainment, Instrument Cluster, Powertrain and Hybrid Systems, Consumer electronics, Home Appliances, Wearable, Industrial , Smart Grid and Smart Metering, Factory Automation, Building Control, Points-of-Sale and Kiosks, Digital Power Conversion, Networking, Software Defined Networking, Simplifying network provisioning, Data Center, Healthcare , Imaging, Motor Control, Smart Energy, Connectivity. Some of the most challenging applications for educational kits that have completely transformed facet of designing, prototyping & educational kits are in article ahead. The Internet of Things: A great impact on our industrial set-ups and have kick off trends like home automation, smart cities etc. the very basic requirements of IoT based projects are, embedded processing performance and power efficiency, interoperability and security to a sustainable IoT. Performance and power-efficiency, particularly at the end node level, are prerequisites while interoperability and security have the potential to directly impact end-user experience and acceptance. A fully-secure IoT is required to ensure data privacy and protect against criminal misuse of end-user data and also guards against infiltration of unmanned command-control systems, including increasingly electrified connected cars, homes, medical devices and even city infrastructure. A project that meets all mentioned performance & security challenges requires a specified kits and dedicated components will be required. Automotive: Increasing complexity of end node security as the car itself becomes an end node. The more than 100 ECUs in the average car are now adding wireless connectivity, opening up new vulnerabilities to data privacy and driver safety. The physical separation of the control and data plane in virtualized environments requires secure data over multiple miles versus inches in traditional networks. We all talk that, connected Vehicles are safer, more fuel efficient and more pleasant to drive than in any previous generation and they are now an extension of the owner’s personal life style. Many of these advancements are due in large part to innovations in semiconductor technology. Designing a project for automotive application will require a broad portfolio of automotive MCUs, MPUs, analog integrated circuits and sensor solutions. Today’s educational kits are capable of breakthrough automotive designs for internal combustion powertrain and hybrid drive-trains, body electronic and gateways, chassis solutions, safety and driver assistance solutions, instrument clusters and infotainment solutions. Home Appliances: Modern home appliances are more than just house hold appliances, but highly technological electronics segment. Depending on specific household requirements now-a-day specific end products can be designing and use for education and training purposes. Today’s educational kits must consist of microcontrollers and sensors keep up with the demand for constant improvements in reliability, cost and energy efficiency. Modern kits, helps to simplify designers and trainees job with sensor and MCU accomplishments for home appliances concept projects including electric/gas cooking, dishwashers, refrigerators/freezers, washers, dryers and room air conditioners. Tablets/Embedded applications: Success in the embedded projects relies on combining great hardware and software design with fast time to market. Embedded projects required to delivers industry-leading performance, low power for extended battery life and support for a wide range of operating systems. Wearable Projects: Smart watches or wearable are mobile media centers on the go. Offering advanced features such as touch screen, media players and access to social networking applications. Designing wearable based projects is nothing new in education & training programs. Some of the basic requirements of a wearable projects could be, Collect real-time energy consumption from smart meter and power consumption data, Control activation/deactivation of home appliances, Provide control menus to control appliances, Provide a link to the utility and/or Internet, The Electrocardiograph (ECG) Accessory uses a function-specific sensor that monitors your heart rate and sends the signals to a smart phone application to share the data. It could also share the information with your healthcare provider. The same approach could be used for a pressure-based altimeter, a breathalyzer, a weather monitoring station and blood glucose monitoring. Some of the wearable projects could be, Portable Electrocardiograph (ECG), Home health monitoring, Exercise equipment accessories, Sporting accessories, Health and fitness monitoring and Professional medical diagnostic equipment. Augmented Reality: This will be highly sophisticated project for Indian students. Such projects employ sensors and software to offer you a new level of user experience for next-generation mobile devices in the consumer, medical and automotive infotainment markets. An augmented reality project puts a virtual view on top of your real world, bridging the gap between the actual and digital worlds. Information, media, education, services and advertisements becomes layered content from the Internet to match specific environments and contexts in a more natural way. So far Indian industry has seen such projects for industrial prototyping & training purpose only.
Er. Rohit Gupta – Director, Salicon Nano Technology Pvt. Ltd.
As per Mr. Gupta, Salicon’s commitment to high quality standards in product design, development, EDIFICATION TOOLS production, installation and service, manufacturing facility has received the ISO 9001 certification. Talking about educational kits he said, now a day’s everyone is talking about production growth but no one has concrete plan to achieve same .it is possible only with trained person and that is possible only when we train our generation for the new challenges. New technology with new application is coming for every corner of word and we are only adopting that not generating as per our needs. We need to change this system and design products as per our requirement for that we need cluster development centers every corner of country that is equipped with state of art tools and teaching ads –software as well as hardware. We are designing our trainers or instruments on latest embedded devices with lot of freedom to trainer/students so that they can use that as they want. We developed Microwave power meter on new devices that has wide frequency range and lot of measurement unit selection.
Mr. Satish Thakare – R&D Chief Technical, Officer (CTO), Scientech Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
As per Mr. Thakare, there is a good market potential for Training Kits but now Faculty; Students are looking for Training Platforms. It is not only focused on some specific experiments but now Training Platforms allows each individual to explore the Technology, Subject in detail. It is a complete package of Online Learning Content and a balance combination of Hardware and Software. Future of Training Platforms will be Learn and Implement Technology Platforms. A one step ahead, user will learn the technology and then go for implementing his own ideas by using the same platform. Scientech have such kind of platforms in our range and are not only limited to understand technology but also covers interfacing with real time applications. Talking about key requirements of designers & trainees he said, it should not be experiment focused rather it should be technology focused with real time application. It is to be a complete solution for Technology Learning. Further he added, People are understanding the need of the time and going beyond a syllabus centric approach of requirement. Now the requirement is purely based on Subject /Technology centric. Scientech have wide range of products addressing broad spectrum of present need but yes you we assure you of delivering new and innovative approach in this area. Scientech have developed SimTel – Simplified Teaching & Learning tool focused on various subjects and technology. Now user has realized the need of such tool to build strong foundation of knowledge and skills required by each individual in Technical Field and good number of customers are getting advantage and delivering results.
Conclusion
Educational kits is seeing a changing its facet just from basic training aspect and to dedicated application, highly sophisticated projects and in line companies are providing suitable solutions. Today’s educational kits have broken barrier of just educational stuff and becoming a specialized and professional industry segment.
