The Lab-In-A-Box project: An Arduino compatible signals and electronics teaching system

The Stanford “Lab-In-A-Box” project comprises an open source hardware and software tool chain for teaching signal processing and analog electronics. It is intended to improve the teaching of these concepts by providing a platform that is more open and understandable and by lowering the economic barriers to students interested in the field. To do this, the Lab-In-A-Box brings a full powered Digital Signal Processor (DSP) core to the popular Arduino microcontroller environment and marries it with a simple to use analog front end (AFE). The software platform provided with the Lab-In-A-Box includes an Arduino-like development environment that facilitates learning and quick development of signal processing applications without abstracting away the intricacies of a practical implementation. This system has been used to create several teaching examples and has been tested in courses at Stanford University.