Development of a remote digital system laboratory

This paper presents a new technique that allows an instructor/student to bring the hardware construction and the laboratory experiments into the Digital System Lab environment through the Internet without being near the actual equipments. It offers relax time constraints, a cost effective way of opening a Laboratory for 24 hours for students locally in a Laboratory. It also enhances sharing of knowledge, expertise and experience. An experimental unit, called e-Lab, is prototyped and tested for variety of design examples. It consists of a PLD/FPGA Board interfaced with a PC using RS232 interface via customized hardware. The custom hardware uses low cost data acquisition components. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been designed for communication between the local PC terminal and the remote e-Lab system. This allows the user to take over the entire control of the system. Students at the local PC can access the Lab PC via internet using Microsoft´s `Remote Desktop Connection´ facility. The prototype uses a Web Cam to provide a view of the FPGA system operation for the remote user. It ensures the remote student´s about correctness of the system operation and enhances confidence through the visual access of the experimental results.