Two countries, one goal, joint success!
A LabVIEW-based soundcard
interface for e-laboratory
Ţepelea Laviniu1, Gavriluţ Ioan1,
Neamţu Ovidiu1, Gergely Eugen1,
Gacsádi Alexandru1
1University
of Oradea, Romania
The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the European Union.
Significant paper ideas:
• The purpose of this paper is to present a way to
develop a technical e-laboratory for students
interested in their continuing training
• To realize an e-learning laboratory we used web
publishing tool from LabVIEW
• The connection between server and remote
computer is realized with a VPN software
• Web publishing tool from LabVIEW allows
concurrent access from different remote computers
to e-laboratory
E-learning ideas
• John Dewey (1859-1952) had new teaching methods
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focused on learning-by-doing (experiential learning)
Now the Wold Wide Web allows the effective support
for collaborative work around the world
Most universities have e-learning environments ready
to be accessed through the web
For physical experimentation the hardware is most of
the times expensive, hard to maintain, and need a
specific guidance through the experiment
That is the reason of increasing usage of simulators
within engineering teaching activities
• But physical experimentation is very necessary in
engineering education
• Now both software simulation and physical
experimentation can be integrated within the same
computer-based environment, even in the e-learning
platform
• Laboratories are essential part of engineering
education; Laboratories bring the course theory
alive
• The general idea behind a remote laboratory is the
ability to access hardware from laboratories or
workbenches from remote locations by using a
popular communication infrastructure like internet.
Remote control technologies in LabVIEW
• National Instruments LabVIEW, is a premier
virtual instrumentation environment where the
development of applications is made graphically
• Now, virtual instrumentation is used in many
places, in industries from automotive to consumer
electronics and especially in universities
• Software and hardware are successfully combined
and LabVIEW has become the most popular easy
development tool in engineering because of its
easy-to-use graphical programming environment
Communication tools:
• LabVIEW built-in Web Server, a DataSocket
Server with ActiveX controls
• G Web Server included in LabVIEW Internet
Toolkit
• Both can realise the communication between
virtual instrument (VI) and a remote computer
• The G Web Server is a stand-alone VI that runs
independently of other VIs
Additional applications:
• Commercial software AppletVIEW - a toolkit
for LabVIEW made by Nacimiento Software
Corporation
• The free application LabVNC - also capable to
present the virtual instrument remotely
• The most useful tool for remote experiments in
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LabVIEW is the Web Publishing Tool
It can make all exciting features of virtual
instruments, easy achievable anywhere in the world,
with the new technology available from National
Instruments LabVIEW, named Remote Panels.
• With this new feature of LabVIEW, a user can
quickly and effortlessly publish the front panel
of a LabVIEW application to use remotely in a
standard Web browser
• Once published, anyone on the Web with the
proper permissions can access and control the
experiment from the real environment
• Thus, LabVIEW Remote Panels turns a VI
with a device connected, into a remote
laboratory with no additional programming or
development time
A LabVIEW-based interface for soundcard
• We made an example application that uses web
publishing tool
• The VI uses the soundcard from the computer
like a cheap data acquisition hardware
• We can generate an audio signal with different
types: sine, square, sawtooth, triangle
• Separately from Sound Generator, there is a
Data Acquisition part who take the data from
soundcard, process the signals, displays the
signals
Connection through a VPN application
• The TCP/IP protocol has been criticized as having
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been designed with no thought of security
The most difficult problem is to communicate
through a proxy, a router or a NAT device, because
web server is situated in a university LAN
A very good solution for this situation is to
communicate through a Virtual Private Network
(VPN) application
VPN is used to create an encrypted tunnel for the
traffic to be sent between the student’s computer
and the web server
VPN tunneling through internet
Hamachi VPN application
Conclusions
• E-learning environment is a high level standard of
education for students, to continue their studies
anytime at home
• An easy way to make a remote controlled
laboratory in science domain is to use LabVIEW,
who can make very easy a web interface to a
virtual instrument connected to a real hardware
device
• To resolve the communication between web
server and remote computers even passing
through a proxy, a router or a NAT device, like in
a university LAN, a solution is VPN
Acknowledgment
• This work was supported by Hungary - Romania
Cross-Border Co-operation Programme 2007 –
2013, in E-Laboratory Practical Teaching for
Applied Engineering Sciences project with
number HURO/0901/028
Thank you for your time !