Advanced integration of OpenLabs VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) with Weblab-Deusto

During the last years, VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) has proved itself a useful tool for electronics remote experimentation, having been deployed in several different universities. As a domain-specific remote laboratory, VISIR offers those features which are required for its stand-alone usage, such as authentication, scheduling, user management, etc. Though for certain purposes this may be adequate, often it is more appropriate to offer VISIR as one kind of experiment among many, under a generic remote laboratories framework, such as WebLab-Deusto, MIT iLabs or Labshare Sahara. These frameworks provide integrated access to several different kinds of experiments, such as electronics, robotics, etc. Through this integration, a smooth experience can be provided to the user, and VISIR can benefit from all the functionality that the generic framework provides (common authentication, load-balancing, scheduling, etc). Efforts are currently being made to integrate VISIR with various laboratories. In this paper, we describe what the integration of VISIR with Weblab-Deusto involves; how certain VISIR-specific functionalities that depended on its original framework were handled, and how through Weblab-Deusto VISIR can easily gain certain new features. Some of those are the integration with different environments such as Facebook, or with Learning Management Systems such as Moodle. Another feature is collaboration among VISIR users, which makes it possible to share a VISIR circuit in real time. Furthermore, through this association VISIR gains new possibilities, such as federation.