A lot has been written and said about the power of technology in revolutionizing higher education. The web is playing an increasingly important role in democratizing higher education -- providing education to anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere. 

As the barriers to entry for effective education continue to fall, I am pleased to share our new endeavor, www.matlabarduino.org. I launched this website along with my graduate students Chris and Vaishali with a mission and vision to provide high definition YouTube videos that demonstrate the use of two powerful technologies -- Matlab and Arduino -- to perform fundamental engineering tasks across several fields. The unifying theme for these tasks is the idea of procuring, analyzing, and visualizing real-world data to generate real-time insights that facilitate data-driven decision making. 

The idea of creating this website and YouTube channel spawned during one of the several useful conversations that I have had with my second-year engineering students in my 800+ student class on engineering data analytics. For those who are not aware of these two technologies, here's a brief introduction:

Matlab is a software application built by the MathWorks. This technical software features one of the most comprehensive collection of software tools that can be and have been used to solve critical engineering and scientific problems. A large number of students around the world have access to Matlab through their universities and other sources.

Arduino is an open source hardware platform readily available in the market. This platform features a microcomputer chip that can be used to connect to sensors, actuators, and other devices, and create systems that can perform several automated tasks reliably and continually. Being open source, all the board designs and list of materials used to create the boards are freely available. Best of all, the entry level Arduino platforms start from $10. The one that we have selected is the Arduino UNO board. This board costs around $30.

So why combine the two? To an engineer such as myself, this is a match made in heaven. The Arduino board provides a simple and inexpensive method of electronically connecting with a plethora of devices and capture real-world data as and when it is generated. On the other hand, Matlab's raw computational prowess and plethora of sophisticated scientific software libraries allow one to analyze this real world data and convert it into information; information that is rich with actionable insights and qualitative acumen; information that can be used to answer difficult engineering and scientific questions.

The response to this website and the YouTube channel has been very encouraging. In just under 3 months since the launch, we have registered about 1500 video views from 70+ countries. These numbers are only expected to grow with time and more cutting-edge content. The average view duration is very close to the average length of our shorter videos.

As an educator, I strongly believe that as humanity becomes increasingly technological, we must provide our current and future generations of engineers and scientists the support structure and knowledge required to create systems that allow for effective and data-driven decision-making. Matlabarduino.org is a step in this direction. So the next time you have an idea, don't wait; simply 1) Plug an Arduino board to your computer 2) Start Matlab, and 3) Join the fun!