An Automated Data Acquisition and Processing System Using Personal Computers for an Undergraduate Electric Machinery Laboratory

Over the last several years the power of personal computers (PC) in enhancing teaching effectiveness in both classroom and laboratory has become universally recognized. The objective of this paper is to describe how PC-based systems are used in undergraduate electric machinery laboratory instruction at New Mexico State University (NMSU). At NMSU the first course in the Power Systems Engineering sequence, ´Introduction to Power Systems Engineering´, is required of all Electrical and Computer Engineering students, as is the associated laboratory class. Laboratory time is equally divided between a computational laboratory that introduces students to the role of simulation in Power Systems Engineering, and a conventional machinery laboratory that involves a study of measurements and instrumentation, machinery, and Power Electronics. It is the intent of the laboratory to provide students with a broad background and still allow them to retain a ´hands-on´ feel for laboratory work. The large enrollment and limited time allocated to the machinery laboratory necessitates the use of some type of automated system for experiments. Key features of the system that was developed are: the primary function of the system is data acquisition and processing; the burden of experiment design, instrument selection and wiring, and data verification remains with the student. - use of the system requires virtually no programming and minimal data entry. - the system is quite inexpensive. - the system does not isolate the student from the experiment; the student must, for example, manually increase load on a generator.