1. On Standardizing the Management
of LabVIEW-based Remote
Laboratories by Remote Laboratory
Management Systems (RLMSs)
Mohamed Tawfik, Elio Sancristóbal, Manuel Castro
Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
David Lowe
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

2. Summary
 A state of art study on the prevailing remote laboratory architectures
outlining the common aspects.
 Technologies adopted for Lab server software technology.
 Technologies adopted for user client- lab server communication.
 Why LabVIEW?
 Creating standard layer for wrapping LabVIEW-based remote
laboratories in RLMSs.

3. Generic Architecture of Remote laboratories
Web Admin
Web Server
Lab Admin
Custom built
OR
Embedded
LabVIEW Panel
Access Portal
OR Lab Server
Users
RDP
User Interface

4. Lab Server Software
Web Admin
Web Server
Lab Admin
Custom built
OR
Embedded
LabVIEW Panel
Access Portal
OR Lab Server
Users
RDP
User Interface

5. VS
Both possess rich and powerful features:
• Data exchange with other GUI applications such as COM, ActiveX, CGI, Java and .Net
applications, and web services.
• Support for standard Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) such as
IVI, VISA, PXI, GPIB, VXI, USB, LXI, and others.
• Connection with ODBC or OLEDB compliance database; compilation as DLL files to be
called from the Lab server software as a driver to execute the experiments on the
hardware.
• Support for OPC Servers to enable HMI and SCADA.

6. VS
• LabVIEW is the most popular remote laboratory environment and it is the most
outstanding representative of graphical programming language visualization and
parameter tuning for remote operation.
• MATLAB is the most powerful computing language for control algorithm
development and simulation
• Full using of their advantages can achieve high efficiency programming. In
numerous remote laboratories applications, a hybrid method was adopted; the
signal acquisition and the GUI were developed with LabVIEW, while numerical
calculation and signal processing were developed with MATLAB.

7. LabVIEW can support several ways of hybrid programming with MATLAB by means of:
• ActiveX automation technology
• DLL technology
• MathScript RT Module
Mathscript module allows
embedding .m file scripts in LabVIEW
applications by connecting the text-
based I/O variables with the inputs
and outputs of LabVIEW.

8. There exist a wide variety of technologies for the communication
between user client-lab server:
 Desktop Sharing
• Virtual Network Computing (VNC)
• Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
 Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
 ActiveX and Java Applets
 Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), e.g, Flash and Java Applets
 LabVIEW Web server
 Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
 Each of these solutions have its relative advantages and disadvantages in
term of performance, security, required plugins.
 However, the trend is more shifted towards web standards solutions such
as AJAX and Web services.
 On the mean time for LabVIEW applications LabVIEW web interface is
the common choice.

9. Why LabVIEW?
1) Its wide integration and compatibility with most of the drivers and the
manufacturer standards such as
VISA, GPIB, VXI, LXI, IVI, USAB, OPC, ODBC, etc.
2) Its communication with web standards and protocols such as Ajax, Web
services, ActiveX, COM, CGI, TCP, UDP, SMTP, etc.
3) Its intuitive graphical programming language.
4) Its compatibility with Matlab files for complex mathematics based applications.
5) It is mainly designed for remote control.
6) It is web server which has facilitated significantly putting LabVIEW application
online in a few steps.
7) The ability to building remote applications in LabVIEW with limited software
development capability only a professional programmer but only a basic
LabVIEW course.
8) Several companies release many commercial products, on which many remote
lab applications could be built such as NI
ELVIS, CompactRIO, Compactdaq, and Festo−all are LabVIEW based.
9) The student edition release made it affordable to many students.

10. All these factors turned LabVIEW to be a de-facto standard in remote laboratories development.
Taking into account that other solutions such as RIAs and CGI are no longer preferred as
discussed in the first section. Thus, hundreds of LabVIEw based remote labs have been
developed at several universities, which have arisen an important question: how to manage and
share all these all these laboratories using RLMSs.

11. Standard API for wrapping LabVIEW based remote laboratories into
RLMSs
…... RLMS
USERS
…...
…... Lab Servers Equipments
Standard
API Diferent LabVIEW-based Remote Labs

12. LabVIEW Communication Tools
• VI Server.
• Calling Objects in LabVIEW Using ActiveX (usefull for
embedding webcam, web pages, files,..)
• Web services.
• Data sockets.
• Calling Shared Libraries (e.g. DLL).
• Protocols (TCP, UDP, rDA, ..).
• Internet (CGI, URL, ..).
• Web publishing tools.

13. Next Step
• Define which communication tools to adapt in building the
layer.
• Standardization of the layer to be compatible with different
RLMSs. (e.g. Sahara, ISA, WebLab Deusto, ..)
• Considering factors such as
• simultaneous access
• security
• connection to database if required
• connection with the session cookie
• Update experiment status (e.g. check availability)

14. More ideas?

15. Thanks for your Attention!
David Lowe