The document outlines the design and implementation of a virtual laboratory for electronic instrumentation utilizing free and open resources. It highlights the effectiveness of virtual laboratories in enhancing educational experiences across various academic levels and describes specific practicals developed for integration into the electronic engineering curriculum. The conclusion emphasizes the acceptable performance of current open-source tools and their role in complementing traditional classroom education.

1. Design of an Electronic Instrumentation
Virtual Laboratory based on Free-Open
Resources
Gustavo Meneses
Ing. Eléctrico UNALMED
Esp. Automatización Industrial UdeA
Msc. en Ingeniería UdeA
Universidad de San Buenaventura

2. Motivations
Over the last decade a complete plethora of free-open
hardware and software resources have been
developed for use in engineering and other fields
[4], more recently significant advances have been
achieved in the field of microcontrollers [5] and
data acquisition and analysis [6]

3. Motivations
Virtual laboratories have become an extended tool used for teachers and students around the world in all
stages of education, ranging from elementary school to higher education[1]. The virtualization of
laboratory practicals has shown to be an effective mean to extend learning scenarios beyond the
classroom or laboratory at campus site.

4. THREE WIDELY KNOWN FREE-OPEN RESOURCES THAT CAN
GET INTEGRATED INTO A VIRTUAL LABORATORY

5. Requirements and functional arrangement for
electronic instrumentation virtual laboratory

6. Project's Goal

The main goal is to design and implement a set of practicals belonging to the Electronic
Instrumentation course for the Electronic Engineering undergraduate program.

Laboratory practicals on temperature sensing, error estimation, data acquisition, remote monitoring
and sound analysis have been designed to be integrated to course virtual activities

7. MAIN HARDWARE-SOFTWARE COMPONENTS FOR THE OPEN
SOURCE WEB-BASED PROPOSED VIRTUAL LAB FRAMEWORK

9. Self-made USB Pinguino board to support the virtual
laboratory circuit and hardware setup for the
practicals

10. Hardware and circuit setup for the implementation of a
practical on temperature sensing and data acquisition

11. Integration scheme for the hardware and software
components of the electronic instrumentation virtual
laboratory

12. General overview of the Virtual Laboratory operating
scenario

15. Conclusions

Current free-open tools exhibits acceptable
performance and offer to users and administrators
enough options to design and put into operation,
implementations covering the essential needs for
virtual practicals.

16. Conclusions

Virtual laboratories and similar e-learning tools
improve and complement traditional “atclassroom” education instead of abolishing it.

17. Conclusions

The solution based in open-free resources has
flexible features that enhance time sustainability.
The less dependent design on hardware-software
elements, allows a wider spectrum of operating
variants, including the adoption of teaching
approaches or models dynamically, as time passes
according to academic results.

18. References
[1] M. Cabrera, R. Bragós, M. Pérez, J. Mariño, J. Rius, O. Gomis, M. Casany and X.
Gironella, “GILABVIR: Virtual Laboratories and Remote Laboratories in Engineering,”in
Proc. Of IEEE EDUCON 2010-The Future of Global Learning in Engineering Education,
Madrid, 2010, pp. 1403-1408
[4] J. Rodríguez, P. Russo and A. Sulé, “A Virtual Exhibition of Open Source Software for
Libraries,” presented at the 16th BOBCATSSS Symposium, Zadar (Croatia), Jan. 28-30,
2008
[5] M. Smolnikar and M. Mohoric, “A Framework for Developing a Microhip PIC
Microcontroller Based Applications,” WSEAS Trans. Advances in Engineering Education,
vol 5, Issue 2, pp.83-91, Feb. 2008.
[6] Z. Peng and L. Ma, “The Realization of SCADA based on Scilab,” In Proc. Of the
International Workshop on Open Source Software SCILAB and its Engineering
Applications OSSS-EA, Hangzhou, China, 2006, pp. 175-185
[7] G. Meneses, M. Correa, B. Mendoza and Y. Ocampo, “Laboratorio virtual para la
enseñanza de instrumentación electrónica,” Revista Ingenierías Usbmed, vol 1, Issue 1, pp.
70-77, Dec. 2010.