ELVIS iLab

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-76).iLabs are remote online laboratories that allow users to perform experiments through the Internet. As an educational tool the iLab platform enables students and educators, who do not have access to laboratories, to complement their theoretical knowledge by carrying out experiments remotely on equipment located anywhere in the world and at any time of the day. Students perform experiments on actual instruments allowing them to get real data, instead of relying on simulations. The iLab project has been deployed in 3 universities in Africa using the National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrument Suite platform which is a cheap all-in-one electronics workstation for electronics experiments. This thesis describes an increase in the functionality available on the current version of the ELVIS iLab in order to enable a wider range of experiments to be run on the platform. The functionalities explored include adding two arbitrary waveform generator channels and bode analyzer for frequency domain analysis, which was not possible in the previous designs.by Adnaan Jiwaji.M.Eng

Collaborative development of remote electronics laboratories in the ELVIS ilab

Remote laboratories represent a significant value to engineering curricula in a variety of cases. Whether it is a complement to a hands-on experience or a substitute when a traditional lab is not feasible, remote laboratories can be a valuable educational resource. Since 1998, the MIT iLab Project has worked to increase the quality and availability of remote laboratories. Using the iLab Shared Architecture, developers of new labs can leverage a set of generic support functions and then share those labs easily and with minimal administrative cost. More recently, the iLab Project, in partnership with Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and in coordination with the Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center (MATEC), has focused on building iLabs around the National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (ELVIS) platform. The ELVIS is a low-cost, small-footprint unit that contains most of the common test instruments found in a typical electrical engineering lab. By coupling the ELVIS with iLabs, a variety of remote electronics laboratories can be built and shared around the world. Using this common hardware/software platform, participants in the iLab Project at different levels of the educational spectrum have developed experiments that meet their individual curricular needs and are able to host them for use by other peer institutions. Not only does this increase the variety of ELVISbased iLabs, but it also spurs the creation of teams that can then build other, more diverse iLabs and substantively participate in project-wide collaborative development efforts. Through such coordinated efforts, iLabs can provide rich practical experiences for studentsMaricopa County Community College District. Maricopa Advanced Technology Education CenterCarnegie Corporation of New YorkMicrosoft CorporationNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (award 0702735)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Cente