Design and implementation of a Web-based distance PLC laboratory

Due to the Internet technology, there have been many distance learning (web-based) courses offered by academic institutes around the world nowadays through the Internet. And these courses have benefited many students who might be constrained by distance and time. Nevertheless, most web-based courses are "lecturing courses" that cannot fulfill the need for engineering technology education. In this paper, we propose hardware/software architecture for a web-based distance laboratory for programmable logic controllers (PLCs). This Web-based PLC Lab allows the laboratory facilities shared among several academic institutes and can be accessed by registered students to practice PLC experiments at their own home, enhancing the quality of education without much increasing in the overall cost. With the help of web cameras, the students can even observe the live video of PLC experiments through the Internet.