ModuLab: A Modular Plug-and-Play Platform for Scalable Real-Time Environmental Monitoring and Visualization in Research Laboratories

Laboratories today need flexible, budget-friendly tools that can grow with their experiments. We present ModuLab, a proof-of-concept platform built to streamline environmental monitoring and pave the way for scaled-up deployments. ModuLab’s backbone is a microcontroller-driven I²C bus to which discrete, hot-swappable sensor modules—measuring temperature, pH, light intensity, and humidity—attach via standardized headers. An MCP2221A bridge creates a USB virtual COM port, and onboard LEDs immediately signal power, bus activity, or fault conditions. On the host side, a lightweight Python application using the Bokeh library captures data at 10 Hz, applies simple noise filtering and calibration adjustments, and renders interactive plots with threshold alerts and historical logging. This combination lets researchers swap modules mid-experiment, spot anomalies in under a second, and archive raw data for later analysis—without writing a single line of new code. We built ModuLab for under USD 100 in off-the-shelf parts and validated it over a 48-hour run that simulated ±5 °C temperature ramps and pH titrations. The platform maintained ±0.2 °C temperature accuracy, ±0.05 pH precision, and sampling jitter below 100 ms, even during live module exchanges. By marrying true plug-and-play hardware with an intuitive visualization layer, ModuLab offers a friendly, scalable starting point for laboratories aiming to prototype—and eventually expand—custom environmental sensing solutions.