Hands-on using on-line engineering: The trend to better solutions

The use of on-line experiments has been offering new resources and opportunities for laboratory training activities, especially in many engineering areas. In the Instrumentation for Measurement Laboratory (LIM), at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), different experiments were developed in the field of measurements mainly based in software and hardware from National Instruments. The experiments are accessible through Moodle platform using a home made booking system. The experience accumulated over the years, has made it clear that the systems' performance and availability have not been improved with time, as it was expected. The incompatibilities related with the type of browser and version number, the network firewall, the antivirus software (and respective updates) have been demanding more and more technical attention. Hence, we have been looking for other solutions, not only for presenting a better performance and more universal behavior, but also to make them become more economic and lower power consumption. The use of free software and stand-alone hardware, turned out to be the clear solution, although, it presents a higher complexity and requires more technical knowledge and time to develop. The present work describes two experiments following this trend: a gravity pendulum, controlled microcontroller, and a water closed loop system controlled by a PLC.