although both ESP32 glove platforms could be connected directly via WiFi to the cloud via google cloud pub/sub services a decision was made to implement a raspberry pi 4 as a local standa alone app server and remote gateway so that a teacher could locally connect to the education platform from a device say cellphone or tablet in case no internet service is actually available and could be use as a stand alone face-to-face platform and if internet service is available then all local communications are replicated to the cloud. 

having a local stand alone gateway also gives the possibility of recording the transactions locally and then replicating them later to the cloud for remote supervision.  it also serves as a OTA update service repository.