Novel Design Solutions for Remote Access, Acquire and Control of Laboratory Experiments on DC Machines

Laboratory experiments are integral part of science and engineering education. Automation is changing the nature of these laboratories, and the focus of the system designer is on the availability of various interfacing tools to access the laboratory hardware remotely with the integration of computer-supported learning environment. This paper presents the novel design techniques to access experiments on electrical machines remotely through the Web using virtual instrumentation (VI) tools. The general Web-interface architecture is presented to facilitate control and measurement of experimentation parameters online with complete isolation from the electrical line voltage. LabVIEW-supported VI tools are used to create the Web-based automation and control of the experiment hardware. The custom-built electrical hardware is designed to interface the Web server with the experimental resources and to support user-friendly interface to access the data online. The safety issues while operating the electrical machines online are addressed through the control logic designed by the graphical code. The designed system exploits the data acquisition and the LabVIEW features to extend the dc motor and generator experimentation online along with the acquired data that are presented in virtual meters as well as in graphical plots.