How to Use Remote Labs for Enhancing E-Learning on PSoCs

Abstract

Electronic teaching is a task that intents to also prepare the student to understand and design analog and digital circuits. However the design flow in those two arenas are quite opposite as result of very different development state and also are the design methodologies, being challenging for both teachers and students. In fact, the electronic design in the digital field is centered in the use of components based in two kind of circuits (microprocessor and FPGA) using a relatively high level programing/configuring languages. In an opposite way, the analog design is traditionally founded in the use of elementary components (e.g. resistors and capacitors) associated with macroblocks (e.g. operational amplifiers) in order to built-up the wanted mission circuit. However they have just a few analog programmable components, as the PSoC that is analogically configurable in a similar manner that the one already used in the digital domain. The use of this kind of components, however, is not straightforward being necessary to get some concepts traditionally not taught in the analog electronic classes. The training using PSoC are then indispensable to verify if the programed analog circuit corresponds to the intended one. The current work present an innovative remote lab to support teaching of the PSoC.