Integration Of Real-Time Experiments With Internet Access

The revolution of Internet enabled instrumentation is emerging as a revolution in Measurement and Automation. New standards are being developed for transmitting data and connecting instruments to the Internet. The main purpose of this thesis is to design and develop a system to Integrate various Real time experiments and be able to monitor and control them over Internet using LabVIEW. LabVIEW is a graphical programming package capable of data acquisition, data analysis, data presentation and real time remote control. In this thesis a Real time system is developed which integrates several real time experiments and remote control access over Internet is provided using LabVIEW. The latest remote panel technology is used to provide the remote control access. There are four Real time instrument experiments developed in this thesis project. They are Automatic Mixing Controller, The Digital Storage Oscilloscope from Gould Instruments, Temperature Controller and an Electronic Recording Rain/Precipitation Gauge. These four instruments are connected and communicated from the main computer by external Data Acquisition Board (DAQ) for the Automatic Mixing Controller, By General Purpose Interface Board (GPIB) for the Oscilloscope, by Data Acquisition board (DAQ) for the Temperature controller and by Serial port for the Electronic Recording Rain/Precipitation Gauge. A system is developed to integrate all the applications listed above into one application and are monitored and controlled remotely over Internet using LabVIEW

Design of a virtual laboratory environment for a water bath temperature control system

In technical education, laboratory components comprise as an essential part, without it engineering education remains incomplete. Experiments conducted on laboratory equipments lend a practical touch to the theoretical knowledge acquired by the students. However, setting up a specialized laboratory consisting of sophisticated and expensive equipments is an unaffordable for many universities and engineering colleges. Therefore, by developing virtual experiments, sharing of specific and expensive equipment among institution is made much easier, as it can be used from any place with secure and controlled access. In this project, the system is developed using LABVIEW 8.6. This project consists of three stages. The first stage is hardware development, which involves construction of interface circuit to allow communication between plant and computer. The second stage is to build the Fuzzy Logic Controller using LABVIEW software, where fuzzy set and rulebase are applied. The final stage is to publish the GUI module onto the web for real-time remote control

Remote laboratories in teaching and learning – issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education

This paper discusses the major issues that impinge on the widespread adoption of remote controlled laboratories in science and engineering education. This discussion largely emerges from the work of the PEARL project and is illustrated with examples and evaluation data from the project. Firstly the rationale for wanting to offer students remote experiments is outlined. The paper deliberately avoids discussion of technical implementation issues of remote experiments but instead focuses on issues that impinge on the specification and design of such facilities. This includes pedagogic, usability and accessibility issues. It compares remote experiments to software simulations. It also considers remote experiments in the wider context for educational institutions and outlines issues that will affect their decisions as to whether to adopt this approach. In conclusion it argues that there are significant challenges to be met if remote laboratories are to achieve a widespread presence in education but expresses the hope that this delineation of the issues is a contribution towards meeting these challenges

LARES-lab: a thermovacuum facility for research and e-learning. Tests of LARES satellite components and small payloads for e-learning

LARES, an Italian Space Agency satellite, has been launched successfully in 2012. A small thermovacuum facility has been designed and built specifically for performing tests on the optical components of the satellite. Due to the extremely demanding performances of the optical cube corner reflectors, the space conditions have been simulated using the most up-to-date technology available. In particular Sun, Earth and deep space can be simulated in a ultra high vacuum. It is planned to automate the facility so that it can be operated remotely over the internet. The students during the lectures and the researchers from home will be able to perform thermal tests on specimens by exposing them, for specified amount of time, toward Earth, Sun or deep space. They will collect pressures and temperatures and will input additional thermal power through resistive heaters. The paper will first describe the facility and its capabilities showing the tests performed on LARES satellite components but will focus mainly to the planned upgrades that improve its remote use both for research and e-learning

LTE Spectrum Sharing Research Testbed: Integrated Hardware, Software, Network and Data

This paper presents Virginia Tech's wireless testbed supporting research on long-term evolution (LTE) signaling and radio frequency (RF) spectrum coexistence. LTE is continuously refined and new features released. As the communications contexts for LTE expand, new research problems arise and include operation in harsh RF signaling environments and coexistence with other radios. Our testbed provides an integrated research tool for investigating these and other research problems; it allows analyzing the severity of the problem, designing and rapidly prototyping solutions, and assessing them with standard-compliant equipment and test procedures. The modular testbed integrates general-purpose software-defined radio hardware, LTE-specific test equipment, RF components, free open-source and commercial LTE software, a configurable RF network and recorded radar waveform samples. It supports RF channel emulated and over-the-air radiated modes. The testbed can be remotely accessed and configured. An RF switching network allows for designing many different experiments that can involve a variety of real and virtual radios with support for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna operation. We present the testbed, the research it has enabled and some valuable lessons that we learned and that may help designing, developing, and operating future wireless testbeds.Comment: In Proceeding of the 10th ACM International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation & Characterization (WiNTECH), Snowbird, Utah, October 201

IREEL: remote experimentation with real protocols and applications over emulated network

This paper presents a novel e-learning platform called IREEL. IREEL is a virtual laboratory allowing students to drive experiments with real Internet applications and end-to-end protocols in the context of networking courses. This platform consists in a remote network emulator offering a set of predefined applications and protocol mechanisms. Experimenters configure and control the emulation and the end-systems behavior in order to perform tests, measurements and observations on protocols or applications operating under controlled specific networking conditions. A set of end-to-end mechanisms, mainly focusing on transport and application level protocols, are currently available. IREEL is scalable and easy to use thanks to an ergonomic web interface

A comprehensive fractal approach in determination of the effective thermal conductivity of gas diffusion layers in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

The challenges in the fuel cell industry is to produce the efficient thermal and water management for accurate determination of the effectiveness thermal conductivity of gas diffusion layers (GDL) used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC‟s). This is one of the factors affecting the durability of a fuel cell and need to get a solution to minimize costs and optimize the use of electrodes and cells. The main objectives of this research focus on the capability of the fractal approach for estimation the effectiveness of thermal conductivity of gas diffusion layer. Moreover, on this research also to propose modified fractal equations in determination of the effective thermal conductivity of GDL in PEMFCs based on previous study. Other objectives in this study are demonstrated the thermal conductivity of GDL treated with PTFE contents by using through-plane thermal conductivity experiment method. The through-plane measurement (experiment method) has been used in estimating through-plane thermal conductivity of the GDL. Thermal resistance for GDL also has been investigated under compression pressure 0.1 MPa until 1.0 MPa. In fractal equation, the determination of tortuous and pore fractal dimension can be done by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) method. Determination of effectiveness thermal conductivity using of fractal equation with slightly modified. In findings, it was found that fractal equation have been modified and measured on the GDL parameter characteristics. It was shown that the value of the effectiveness thermal conductivity of the sample using fractal approach is in good agreement with the experimental value. Finally, all the effective thermal conductivity measured by experimental and fractal approach have been determined with the variant temperature and compression pressure to show the validation result between of this two methods