Development of a Low-Cost Remote Lab Concept for Electronic Engineering Education Based on NI myDAQ and NI ELVIS

Abstract

Lab work and exercises are an essential part of Electronic Engineering Education as it improves understanding of the theoretical concepts. Remote Labs like VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality) can supplement the learning process but are limited to a small set of components. Therefore, experiments with VISIR should be combined with prepared and fixed circuits.
This work presents an approach, where in the first step new exercises are de-veloped with the NI ELVIS platform, and later implemented with the much more cost-effective NI myDAQ platform. In general, the entire system is very inexpen-sive and scaleable, since a single PC can act as a host for a wide number of exer-cise boards, each of which is connected via a myDAQ.