DESIGNOFPRACTICALACTIVITIESINELECTRONICSUSINGVISIR

REMOTELABORATORIES

MohamedTawfik,ElioSancristobal,SergioMartín,CharoGil,PabloLosada,GabrielDíaz,ManuelCastro

ElectricalandComputerEngineeringDepartmentSpanishUniversityforDistanceEducation‐UNED

Background

• VISIR is a remote laboratory for wiring and measurement of electric and electronic circuits on a bread board.

Background

• The Signal Processing Department ASB at Bleking Institute of Technology(BTH) in Sweden together with National Instruments in USA (as a supplierof instruments) and Axiom EduTECH in Sweden (as a supplier ofeducation, technical software, and engineering services for noise andvibration analysis) have launched the Virtual Instrument Systems inReality (VISIR) Project by the end of 2006.

• The project was financially supported by BTH and the SwedishGovernmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA).

VISIR(VirtualInstrumentSystemsInReality)

TraditionalElectronicLaboratory

PXIPlatform

=

=

PXIPlatform

RelaySwitchingMatrix

OSCI CH1 

OSCI CH1

Components

DMM LOW

DMM HIGH

FGENA

DC Power Supply

Relay Switching Matrix

Commands

RelaySwitchingMatrix

A

0

B

COM

C

X1

D

X2

E

X3

F

X4

G

X5

H

X6

I

=

RelaySwitchingMatrix

RelaySwitchingMatrix

OperationCycle

Equipment server

Measurement server(Visual C++)

DatabaseMySQL

Web ServerApache

HTTPSHTTPXML

TCP/IP

HTTPXML

TCP/IP

HTTP

TCP/IP

Max Lists Component List

Equipment server softwareLabVIEW

WebPage(php and Flash)

PXI Platform + Relay switching matrix

User Interface

VirtualWorkbench

Virtualworkbench

Implementation

So far, 7 universities and institutes have already implemented a VISIR :

• Bleking Institute of Technology (BTH).• Carinthia University of Applied Sciences.   • FH Campus Wien University of applied sciences.• Polytechnic Institute of Porto (ISEP).• University of Deusto.• Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED).• Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT‐M).

Implementation

InternationalAssociationofOnlineEngineering• One important objective of theVISIR project is to create a labcommunity consisting of all theparticipant universities andorganizations. Consequently, itwould be possible to create a gridlaboratory where the nodes areonline lab workbenches distributedamong those universities. Thiswould allow sharing lab recoursesand sharing online workbenches.

• The IAOE have created the VISIRSpecial Interest Group (SIG VISIR)

VISIR‐LXI• University of Deusto is developing a new

LXI‐based VISIR system, in which all theinstruments are replaced with IVI driversinstruments (instead of NI) and LXIcomplaint.

• The aim is to:1. Use standards devices, not proprietary

solutions2. reduce the cost of the PXI instruments.3. Use a commercial switching matrix and

not a proprietary one.4. increase the system flexibility.5. permit the system integration into

WebLab‐Deusto architecture, whichwould make it easily integrated to anLMS.

VISIR‐iLab• The System EngineeringDepartment at Carinthia Universityof Applied Science together withBTH are working on the integrationVISIR into ISA framework to provideusers form iLabs Community thepossibility of deploying and usingVISIR in their ISA framework and totake the advantages of the servicesprovided by ISA. This integrationallows sharing of VISIR with a highload capacity in an efficient way.

VISIR‐LMS

• The Electrical and computer engineering department at UNED isresearching into the integration of the services provided by the VISIRinterface with those provided by LMS. By this way, users could access toVISIR through the LMS with a single sign‐on and every account type inthe LMS (teacher, student, administrator, etc.) would have the sameprivileges of its equivalent account type in VISIR interface.

VISIR‐LMS

• A module to add laboratories has already been created forMoodle.

• The next step is to communicate this module with VISIR byweb services.

VISIR‐LMS

• A module to add laboratories has already been created forMoodle.

• The next step is to communicate this module with VISIR byweb services.

VISIR‐LMS

• VISIR in Moodle (embedded in HTML)

MohamedTawfik,ElioSancristobal,SergioMartín,CharoGil,PabloLosada,GabrielDíaz,ManuelCastro

ElectricalandComputerEngineeringDepartmentSpanishUniversityforDistanceEducation‐UNED