Design and implementation of Remote

Mechatronics Laboratory for e-Learning using

LabVIEW and Smartphone and CrossPlatform Communication Toolkit (SCCT)
Nur Aqilah Akmal Binti Noor Azhar
nurakmal0421@gmail.com

Abstract This paper reports a work-in progress at

the SOLVE, Students Online Laboratory Through
Virtual Instrumentation, at the National Institute of
Technology, Surathkal, Karnataka on the design and
implementation of a remote lab utilizing emerging
technologies.The paper focuses on the basic
implementation of a remote laboratory using the
publisher-subscriber architecture. Control system
and Vibration experiments were chosen for
practical implementation which could be monitored
and controlled by students using internet. This
enabled the remote users to gain a better
understanding of the concept of vibrations and
control system by performing the real experiment
at a time and place of their choice. Both publisher
and subscriber were developed using LabVIEW and
SCCT add-on for communication. SCCT provides
high performance
data
communication
on
conventional platforms like LabVIEW, Android,
HMTL5, Java, JavaScript, thereby making it
multiplatform approach. The method followed for
data acquisition by the experimental server,
architecture followed at the publisher and subscriber
end, brief description about the performable
experiments is explained in the present paper.

Index TermsRemote laboratory, e-learning,

virtual lab, Mechatronics laboratory.
I.
INTRODUCTION
A remote laboratory is defined as a
computer-controlled laboratory that can be
accessed and controlled over some communication
medium [1]. The Remote triggered virtual labs have
evolved with the advances in information and
telecommunication technologies and have emerged
as a powerful tool with regard to experimentation
[2]. It is envisaged that the Remote Triggered
Virtual Labs are the future scope for learning. In the
IEEE Engineering Education Conference 2010
The Future of Global Learning in Engineering
Education (EDUCON 2010) survey it was
reflected that virtual and Remote Labs are more
likely to improve engineering education [3]. In

India, the MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource

Development, Govt. Of India) under the National
mission on education through information and
communication technology has taken up the
initiative for e-learning through the concept of
remote laboratories in some of the selected
institutes in India.
Different architectures can be used to
support e-learning environments [4, 5, 6, and 7].
Some are based on proprietary software solutions
such as LabVIEW, while others are supported by
open-source software such as PHP, JavaScript,
Java, Python, AJAX, etc. The solution proposed
in this paper uses LabVIEW at both server and
client end for development. The student at the client
only needs to run the application file with
LabVIEW Run-time engine installed.
II.

LABORATORY AND
HARDWARE
ARCHITECTURE
The following figure 1 shows the architecture used
for the implementation of the Remote laboratory. It
follows the Publisher-Subscriber architecture where
the Publisher acts as the server and the Subscriber
behaves as the client.

Fig. 1. Publisher-Subscriber architecture used for

implementation

The experimental set-ups at the SOLVE,

Virtual Lab at NITK Surathkal are as follows:
1.

PID Controlled coupled tank.

2. Tuned Mass Damper.

used in the setups. The pumps and valves are

supplied the required 230V AC, 24V DC
respectively through the relay banks. The
accelerometer data are collected by the NI PXI4496. Power supply to experiment sensors like level
sensors is supplied directly.

3. Transmissibility Ratio of vibrating table.

4.

Forced vibration of cantilever beam.

5.
Damped and lightly damped cantilever beam
vibration analysis.
The above setups were connected to a
single experimental server, an industrial computer
called the NI PXI-1042. The PXI was used both as
the experimental server and the lab server as it had
both the windows operating system, with Pentium
processor and also the embedded controller, NI
PXI-8110.All the sensing and actuation connections
were done to a single experimental server as shown
in the figure 2.
The water level sensors values are received
by the SCB-68 connector block analog channel.
The LED indicators receive inputs from the SCB68 which is connected to the NI PXI 6229
multifunction DAQ. NI PXI 6229 has 32 analog
input channels, 48 digital input channels, 4 analog
output channels. The PWM counter output is given
to the motor drivers which run the motors of Tuned
Mass Damper, Forced vibration experiment setup.
Analog output channel drives the vibrating table.

III.
-

LabVIEW
is
an
graphical
programming
environment
introduced
by
National Instruments (NI) for developing, testing,
and controlling systems using intuitive graphical
icons, known as Virtual Instruments (VIs).
LabVIEW is scalable across multiple Operating
Systems (OSs) such as Windows, Mac, and Linux,
thereby acts a tool for development in multiple
platforms [8].
LabVIEWs features like Web Publishing
Tools, Mobile Module, Web Services, Shared
Libraries or Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) can be
used in the implementation of remote laboratory.
-

NI PXI 2565 Relay driver module drives

the relay banks of pumps, valves and electromagnet

Smart
phone
Communication Toolkit

Cross-platform

SCCT provides communication libraries

for bidirectional communication between a server
and a pool of applications called clients [9]. It was
chosen over other remote communication
techniques for the following advantages:

Fig. 2. Hardware architecture of the publisher

SOFTWARE USED
LabVIEW

Multi-platform
compatibility
over
platforms like Android, Java, HTML5,
Linux, LabVIEW in Windows.
Security: SCCT allows filtering of valid
and invalid addresses (white and black
lists) in order to simplify the realization of
applications that need access monitoring,
operation logging.
SCCT handles both the broadcasting and
point to point communication, so that it is
possible to choose who is allowed or not to
receive your data.

The Remote Labs publisher-subscriber

architecture
is
realized
using
Communication libraries provided by
SCCT in LabVIEW.

PUBLISHER LIBRARY - This library

helps to create a full-featured publisher,
which authenticates incoming subscribers,
check connection status and sends data to
all active publishers and passes their
request to the application. Publisher takes
care of server side communication system.

SUBSCRIBER LIBRARY - This library

helps to create a subscriber which handles
all communication details with a publisher.
It receives data packages and presents
them to front end application according to
their data types. SCCT simplifies data
exchange among applications.
SCCT
handles many connections at the time and
publishes data in different formats
according to subscribers capabilities.
Publisher of Remote Lab:

Publisher is the server part and acts as a bridge

between the subscribers and the experiments. The
publisher is developed using LabVIEW. The
SCCT add-on is used along with LabVIEW
which provides communication libraries.
Fundamental feature of MIT ILABs
architecture design was the support of scalability of
user access [3]. This was incorporated in the
publisher development where there is an
opportunity for many users to monitor the
experiments and only one user controlling the
experiment.

Fig 3.(b) Subscriber algorithm

IV.
SUBSCRIBER OF REMOTE LAB
The subscriber gets an application file which is
developed using LabVIEW and SCCT add-on for
communication. The students as subscribers will try
to access the publisher from distant locations using
the application file.

Fig 3. (a) Publisher algorithm

Fig.5. Subscriber front panel of

PID controlled coupled tank
The figure 3(b) shows the flow chart of the
subscriber process. After downloading the

application file and installing LabVIEW Run-Time

engine, the subscriber will try to connect to the
publisher by writing the API key and port number.
The subscriber will be set to monitor mode or
control mode according to the time slot.
The actuation signals from the controlling
subscriber will be sent from the SCCT subscriber
library to the publisher. The sensed data is extracted
and used in the calculations of the experiment.
The students can re-perform the
experiment within the time frame allotted to him.
The subscriber can get access to the publisher for a
particular number of trials and time after which the
connectivity is terminated.
The figure 5 shows the application file for
conducting the PID controlled coupled tank
experiment. After the student logs in, using the API
key and port number, the connection status is
inducated. In the control mode of operation, the
student can perform the experiment and in the
monitor mode he can only visualize the progress of
other students. The subscriber gets a live video and
audio feed for better feel of the experiment.
Setup 1: PID controlled coupled tank
experiment:
This experiment uses PID control
algorithm for controlling the inflow of water into
two tanks and the level is maintained according to
the set levels, despite of the leakages through the
bottom valves. The students can vary the
parameters of the PID controller to see the
behaviour of the system
Setup 2: Tuned Mass Damper:
In the Tuned Mass Damper experiment,
sacrificial load is given to the top tank to reduce the
vibration of the whole system. The vibration is
caused due to the unbalanced motor whose speed
can be controlled by the student as shown in the
figure 6(a). The student can vary the top tank mass
and bottom tank mass to study the vibration
behavior.

Fig. 6 (a)

Fig. 6 (b)
Setup 3: Transmissibility Ratio of vibrating
table:
In this experimental setup a cantilever
beam is placed on a vibrating table and
accelerometers are mounted at the two ends of the
beam. The vibration table is actuated at a particular
frequency set by the student and vibration data is
acquired from the accelerometers. The student will
study the vibration transmitted from the fixed lower
end to the free top end of the beam by calculating
the transmissibility ratio as shown in figure 6 (b)
Setup 4: Damped and lightly damped
vibration of a cantilever beam:
The student excites, two cantilever beams
using an electromagnet. One of the beams
vibrations is dampened by a damping tape stuck on
it and the other is free to vibrate. The vibration data
got from the accelerometers is used to calculate the
beam stiffness and damping ratio. The front panel
is as shown in figure 7(a).
Setup 5: Forced vibration of the cantilever
beam:
The student actuates the cantilever beam
using an unbalanced motor and observes the
different mode shapes and natural frequency as
shown in figure 7(b).

Figure.7. (a) Damped vibration front panel

Figure.7 (b) Forced vibration front panel

V.
Conclusion and Recommendation
This paper has given the Remote Lab design
and implementation being developed at National
Institute of Technology, Karnataka, Surathkal. The
remote lab had several state of the art features like
multiple user support, queues, real time video
observation, and experiment monitoring, secure
access. The purpose of the above remote lab
implementation is to set up an advanced remote
laboratory, which can be applied to enhance todays
education of experiments. Future research in this
area will concentrate on:
a.
Separating lab server into experimental
server and publisher server to achieve better safety
to server and using the experimental server NI PXI
in Real-Time mode to achieve greater precision and
speed.
b.
Exception handling to take care of failure of
either the Lab server or the Experimental server.
c.

Channel optimization using Switch Matrix.

6.0 REFERENCES
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