Modular Workbench for In-Situ and Remote Laboratories

This communication describes a learning platform which is being developed at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain. The goal was to solve the trade-off between the need for performing real laboratory practices in engineering education and the emergent implantation of distance learning in our curricula. Most of our courses in electronic engineering have 50% of the load devoted to laboratory work. The semi-distance EE degree allows the students to carry out at home the theory and problems study but keeps the in-situ laboratories. We developed a previous remote laboratory, based on a VXT system, an experiments board and a Web-server that is working since 2002 but which cannot serve simultaneous users and which is difficult to expand and maintain. The workbench we propose intends to preserve the experimental work but allowing the students to perform a variable number of laboratory activities remotely, using the same platform than the in-situ laboratories. This approach preserves not only the feeling of reality but the knowledge of the experimental set-up features. The subject of the experience is the sensors and signal conditioning laboratory. The solution is based on a modular set of electronic boards. Two kind of base or mother boards allow the connection of several daughterboards which implement the different experiments. One of the motherboards is only intended for in-situ experiments but the other includes an Ethernet capable microcontroller and A/D and D/A converters which allow the realisation of both in-situ and remote laboratory activities over the same set-up. The microcontroller firmware is based on a command parser that accepts SCPI strings. The board is controlled through LabView drivers which use the TCP/IP sockets and the specific applications can be controlled using remote panels in LabView 7.1 both in-situ and remotely. Access control, register and scheduling will be performed using the UPC virtual campus Atenea, which is implemented using Moodle (modular object oriented distance learning environment).