A Fully Integrated Open Solution for the Remote Operation of Pilot Plants

Nowadays remote access to systems in the instrumentation and measurement fields is both a reality and a challenge. There is a growing interest in replacing manual actions performed on site by remote actions carried out from anywhere around the world. To do that, besides the availability of suitable communication networks, it is necessary for the elements involved in the network to recognize each other, this latter task perhaps being the most complex one of the two. Integrating different hardware/software from different manufacturers into a single system with controlled remote access is not a trivial task. This paper presents a fully integrated open solution for the operation of pilot plants (scaled down, laboratory level industrial plants operated in university and other environments) using open access hardware/software on public networks. The proposed solution is independent of the nature of the pilot plant and its elements and can therefore be considered standard. In order to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed solution, two different types of pilot plant are presented

Enhancing EJsS with extension plugins

Easy JavaScript Simulations (EJsS) is an open-source tool that allows teachers with limited programming experience to straightforwardly bundle an interactive computer science or engineer simulation in an HTML+ JavaScript webpage. Its prominent place in Physics (where it has won several prizes) should not hinder its application in other fields (such as building the front-end of remote laboratories or learning analytics) after having adapted part of the functionality of EJsS to them. To facilitate the future inclusion of new functionalities in EJsS, this paper presents a new version of this tool that allows the enhancement of EJsS, letting it incorporate new tools and change its graphical user interface, by means of extension plugins (special software libraries). To illustrate the benefits of this distributable self-contained non-intrusive strategy, the paper (a) discusses the new methodological possibilities that the Plugins bring to EJsS developers and users, and (b) presents three plugins: one to support the plugin management and the others to easily set up a streamlined remote laboratory. Moreover, the paper also presents the main characteristics of that remote lab to allow readers take advantage of EJsS and the three plugins to set up new online experiments for their students quickly