Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are an excellent illustration of the types of challenges that future technologists must address. In previous work we presented a course designed to engage students with theoretical aspects of embedded and cyber-physical systems. In this paper we present MicroITS, a platform addressing applied aspects. We articulate the design goals that we believe are needed to achieve engagement in an educational setting, and describe the platform and its baseline functionality. We briefly describe example projects that can be realized using MicroITS. Our hope is that this report will encourage the development of a community of educators and students interested in the use and the continued development of the platform. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.