Developing MATLAB Data Acquisition and Control Functions for the LABVOLT Electromechanical Training System

The LabVolt Electro-Mechanical System (EMS) is a comprehensive educational training system developed by Festo-Didactic and is adopted by various higher education institutions. The LVDAC-EMS is the software developed by the manufacturer for data acquisition and preliminary control functions; However, customized monitoring functions or tailored control tasks are not supported by the LVDAC-EMS. On the other hand, MATLAB contains various functions and toolboxes for data analysis and control; thus, it would be an ideal software to interface with the EMS to expand its data analysis capabilities. While Festo-Didactic provides a software development kit (SDK) to interface MATLAB with the EMS, the SDK functions are complicated and not user-friendly. The development of a LabVolt MATLAB Interface would simplify the SDK to allow for the easy integration of MATLAB with the EMS so that researchers can use MATLAB to analyze data collected from the EMS. The developed interface contains various functions to acquire data, plot data, and control the outputs and power supply of the EMS. Future work will be creating additional functions and sharing a toolbox for the MATLAB- LabVolt EMS interface.