Development of a remote digital system laboratory

This paper presents a new technique that allows an instructor/student to bring the hardware construction and the laboratory experiments into the Digital System Lab environment through the Internet without being near the actual equipments. It offers relax time constraints, a cost effective way of opening a Laboratory for 24 hours for students locally in a Laboratory. It also enhances sharing of knowledge, expertise and experience. An experimental unit, called e-Lab, is prototyped and tested for variety of design examples. It consists of a PLD/FPGA Board interfaced with a PC using RS232 interface via customized hardware. The custom hardware uses low cost data acquisition components. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been designed for communication between the local PC terminal and the remote e-Lab system. This allows the user to take over the entire control of the system. Students at the local PC can access the Lab PC via internet using Microsoft's ‘Remote Desktop Connection’ facility. The prototype uses a Web Cam to provide a view of the FPGA system operation for the remote user. It ensures the remote student's about correctness of the system operation and enhances confidence through the visual access of the experimental results.