Article

A new virtual-instrumentation-based experimenting environment for undergraduate laboratories with application in research and manufacturing

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Portland State Univ., OR
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (impact factor: 1.21). 01/1999; DOI:10.1109/19.746721
Source: IEEE Xplore

ABSTRACT An undergraduate laboratory based on a functionally complete set
of virtual tools for experimenting is described in this paper. An
outstanding feature of the experimenting environment is an easy-to-use,
graphical user interface to a laboratory experiment. It significantly
shortens the time needed to implement experimenter-defined laboratory
procedures and eliminates the need for high-level-language programming
on the experimenter side. Taking advantage of industry-wide standards
such as VISA, GPIB, and VXI, our virtual instruments can perform their
function using either physical or simulated, local, or remote and
network-distributed instruments coming from a variety of different
manufacturers. A paperless laboratory with on-screen graded measurement
reports was fully implemented. The environment allows remote
experimenting-world-wide in principle. It currently requires a remote
LabVIEW or XWindow session. Work is in progress on giving full access to
our virtual tools using Java-capable web browsers such as Netscape, Hot
Java, or Microsoft Internet Explorer and thus to provide students with a
student-affordable remote experimenting platform

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    Article: A Web Service and Interface for Remote Electronic Device Characterization
    S. Dutta, S. Prakash, D. Estrada, E. Pop
    [show abstract] [hide abstract]
    ABSTRACT: A lightweight Web Service and a Web site interface have been developed, which enable remote measurements of electronic devices as a “virtual laboratory” for undergraduate engineering classes. Using standard browsers without additional plugins (such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or even Safari on an iPhone), remote users can control a Keithley source-measurement unit and monitor results in real time from anywhere on the Internet. As an in-class example, students in a solid-state electronics course used the Web site interface to make real-time transistor measurements. Recommendations are made on how to best integrate the interface into electronics classes based on the student assignment responses. The present interface is flexible and could be expanded to many other devices and instruments. The source code has been openly posted online.
    IEEE Transactions on Education 12/2011; · 1.02 Impact Factor
Data provided are for informational purposes only. Although carefully collected, accuracy cannot be guaranteed. The impact factor represents a rough estimation of the journal's impact factor and does not reflect the actual current impact factor. Publisher conditions are provided by RoMEO. Differing provisions from the publisher's actual policy or licence agreement may be applicable.

Keywords

easy-to-use
 
experimenter side
 
experimenting environment
 
functionally complete
 
GPIB
 
graphical user interface
 
high-level-language programming
 
industry-wide standards
 
Java-capable web browsers
 
laboratory experiment
 
Microsoft Internet Explorer
 
Netscape
 
network-distributed instruments
 
outstanding feature
 
paperless laboratory
 
students
 
undergraduate laboratory
 
virtual instruments
 
virtual tools
 
VISA
 

M.A. Stegawski