Design of Remote Laboratory dedicated to E2LP board
Contents
1. Proceedings of the E2LP Workshop Warsaw 2014 pp 25 29 DOI 10 15439 2014F672 ACSIS Vol 4 Design of Remote Laboratory dedicated to E2LP board for e learning courses Jan Piwinski Przemys owy Instytut Automatyki 1 Pomiar w PIAP Aleje Jerozolimskie 202 02 486 Warszawa Poland Email jpiwinski piap pl Abstract Recently with advent and exploitation of com puter and communication technologies remote laboratories have been widely popular among many universities They are built in order to enhance learning and minimize the gap be tween theory and practice Remote laboratories provide on line pervasive workbenches which allow an interactive learning en vironment that maintains student attention This paper reports on development of remote laboratory which is currently per forming under E2LP FP7 project The paper addresses many solutions in the development stages along with powerful tech nologies involved E learning portal will create and provide new teaching methods in embedded systems design through the real and simulated experiments I INTRODUCTION Laboratories which are found in all engineering and sci ence programs are an essential part of the education experi ence Not only do laboratories demonstrate course concepts and ideas but they also bring the course theory into alive In a traditional laboratory the user interacts directly with the equipment by performing physical actions e g manipulat ing with t2. LOC N24 NET 1A LOC WILY LISTING VHDL DESCRIPTION OF THE NAND FUNCTION IMPLEMENTATION DIGITAL SYSTEM FROM FIGURE 4 Library IEEE use ITBREE oTD LOGIC 1164 All entity MyFirstDigitalSystem is Port 1A 3 in STD LOGIC iB in STD LOGIC oY out STD LOGIC end MyFirstDigitalSystem architecture Behavioral of MyFirstDigitalSystem is Signal sS Std logic begin sS lt iA and iB oY lt not sS end Behavioral JAN PIWINSKI RAFAL KLODA ROMAN SZEWCZYK DESIGN OF REMOTE LABORATORY 29 Using Remote Labs in Education Two Little Ducks in Remote Experimentation 2011 University of Deusto pp 177 199 3 S Dutta S Prakash D Estrada E Pop A Web Service and Interface Future development of RL based on integration of external equipment and services and development of Moodle platform will be done in accordance with the for Remote Electronic Device Characterization in JEEE Trans exercises necessities and end users needs Education Vol 54 No 4 pp 646 651 4 M Tawfik E Sancristobal S Martin G Diaz M Castro State of V REFERENCES the Art Remote Laboratories for Industrial Electronics Applications in Technologies Applied to Electronics Teaching TAEE 2012 pp 1 Distance Learning Remote Laboratories using LabVIEW Publish 359 364 Date Sep 06 2006 http www ni com white paper 3301 en 2 A Nafalski J Machotka Z Nedic Collaborative Remote Laboratory NetLab
3. information between laboratory hardware and software applications The second role of e learning portal is management of users which menas enable them access to the laboratory hardware and software booking functionality and authorization In E2LP project the e learning platform is based on Moodle Platform which is one of the most pop ular open source learning management systems III SCENARIO OF USAGE RL For remote operations user is provided user manual guideline dedicated software and an access to laboratory equipment which enable students to set them up and carry out exercises Our aim was to provide instant feedback to the board in a way that user would work with the real board as if it was connected locally This functionality was a pur pose to developed GUI web interface of front panel that ex actly looks like the real board which has connections to real signals from the real board States of the physical signals are continuously refreshed at defined times 250 ms and tests confirmed that it is sufficient to inform the user by observ ing GUI that his program made during the lab exercise works correctly Below we described current scenario of RL usage during the exercise of design the logic circuits e User write code of his program according to exercise on local Xilinx ISE environment e Generate bit file e Remotely configure FPGA setup the board power up connect the programming modules e Test solutio
4. Fig 3 NI PCI 6509 digital card integration with E2LP board front Panel In remote operations user firstly power the board from the website this is done by power controller module and digital card and run iMPACT on one computer but the operations are performed on a device attached to another computer through a Xilinx Cable Server Xilinx ISE includes such program as well as provide a set of programming tools which allow user to perform operations remotely To use this functionality user only needs to specify a remote server ad dress in proper configuration in iMPACT software This 1s the most important feature of programming device from the RL point of view It should be pointed that all exercise could be done re motely but feedback from some interfaces is not available Error Reference source not found below represents imple mented necessary interfaces according to requirements Connection with the Remote Laboratory is provided via e learning portal and is based on Apache server PHP and SQL server It provides an access to knowledge exercises data sheets through a web user interface and has an ability JAN PIWINSKI RAFAL KLODA ROMAN SZEWCZYK DESIGN OF REMOTE LABORATORY TABLE I IMPLEMENTED INTERFACES IN RL LCD 16x2 Character Display Not tested Full Dip ee a Push ie O Full tool Power Supply ON OFF now under development _ e g HyperTerminal Putty etc GUI web interface to exchange
5. Internet and simultaneously in real time could monitor the evolution of the experiment on implemented dedicated Graphical User interface GUI of the Front Panel of the board Fig 1 4 Automatic verification of course assignments sup ported by Moodle plug in will allow an advanced manage ment of assignments and submissions together with feed back information mechanisms for both teachers and stu 26 dents which will verify whether the students designs work or not according to the specifications Fig 1 E2LP board Front Panel The main advantage of E2LP Remote Laboratory 1s when students interact with the dedicated boards UI implemented as a web service and work with software applications they are actually operating the same tools and instruments like they would be in classic lesson in laboratory RL is a gate which provide an access to continuously re freshed interfaces and signals from the real board and enable user remotely control and program the board directly from their computer at home having instant visual feedback To achieve this it is necessary to forward data directly to the server over common interfaces or over local network by using dedicated hardware solutions and specified proper router configuration 100 digital I O NET Xilinx Platform RS232 Cable USB II paS LABORATORY SERVER router Serial port server Fig 2 Remote Laboratory concept of solution The Fig 2 abov
6. e presents remotely controlled environ ment concept of solution The whole environment is man aged by powerful E2LP Server which is equipped with all common interfaces which are essential for internal hard ware and software compatibility E2LP Server is connected via Ethernet interface to the local network which is respon sible for seamless data communication between environ ment s components The crucial component of the remotely PROCEEDINGS OF THE E2LP WORKSHOP WARSAW 2014 controlled environment is an experiment base board which is controlled by programming device Xilinx Platform HW USB II G This programming device provides integrated firmware to deliver high performance reliable and user friendly configuration of the base board and enables user to program other Xilinx CPLD devices This programming de vice is fully integrated and optimized for use with special ized Xilinx iMPACT software which enable users to per form remote operations such as programming and configur ing FPGA via JTAG interface The NI PCI 6509 digital card with 96 bidirectional I O lines enable user by dedicated GUI interface Error Refer ence source not found to control each pin in the boards front panel interface and consequently enable him to control each led switch and button Furthermore specific module communicates with LCD pins on boards front panel inter face and translate them into RS232 ASCII chars punann Fd kal Gy r J
7. for Experiments in Electrical Engineering in 5 http www e2Ip org
8. he hands pressing buttons turning knobs and re ceiving sensory feedback visual and audio However equipping a laboratory is a major expense and its mainte nance can be difficult 1 Since the experiments are performed in a laboratory that contains expensive equipment the students must be super vised which limits the time they have This also requires a class with many groups performing the experiment at the same time and thus many instruments are required to sup port each group Laboratory experiments are also a serious problem for distance learning students who may not have an access to the laboratory at all 2 As an alternative virtual online laboratories can expose students to hands on learning without incurring the high costs of instructional facilities 3 Remote laboratories are those laboratories that can be controlled and administrated online They differ from the virtual simulated laboratories as they are interacting with physical instruments 4 2014 PTI Rafa K oda Przemys owy Instytut Automatyki 1 Pomiar w PIAP Aleje Jerozolimskie 202 02 486 Warszawa Poland Email rkloda piap pl 25 Roman Szewczyk Przemys owy Instytut Automatyki 1 Pomiar w PIAP Aleje Jerozolimskie 202 02 486 Warszawa Poland Email rszewczyk piap pl II REMOTE LABORATORY In E2LP Embedded Computer Engineering Learning Platform project 5 a Remote Laboratory RL is an exper iment demonstration and a process run
9. n using GUI and standard tool In the design of digital systems logic circuits are used as fundamental components TABLE II presents the NAND Negated AND or NOT AND logic table its truth table in herited from Boolean algebra After setting the input volt ages to the desired values low or high these circuits are capable of calculating values of Boolean functions they rep resent and present the results of Boolean functions on their outputs and this exercise will not go into detail on how these circuits are implemented TABLE II NAND LOGIC TABLE System entity represents the system as seen from outside Imagine observing the system on Fig 4 from outside with out the possibility to see what is inside the system The only things you will see are its input and output ports Input ports are like input variables to a function while output ports are like results of the functions Each output port in a combina tional digital system represents the result of one Boolean function of input ports If the system has N output ports and M input ports it computes N Boolean functions of M vari ables 1 e functions of the same input ports A 5S oY B i A input ports internal signals output ports Fig 4 An example of the digital system In order for the tool to know to which components on the board we want to connect inputs and outputs of our system we need to specify which pin from FPGA we want to asso ciate with which port of our s
10. ning locally to de sign and control an experiment board based on a FPGA de vice but with the ability to be monitored and controlled over the Internet future E learning portal In the base case the RL can be an experiment board con nected to a computer through a standard interface and with the host computer connected to the Internet which provide remote access The client can be any computer connected to the Internet with an ability to see the same interface as the local host and also have the same programs interfaces modules etc The concept of E2LP RL should allow the user to do sev eral actions over an Internet connection which are the list of E2LP Remote Laboratory functionalities l Dedicated software and hardware solutions will provide an access to laboratory equipment and enable stu dents to set them up and operate them at the required level to carry out exercises 2 Users could access the essential data sheets tutori als and software tools which are available on the E learning portal as an introduction to the course which is a RL s con tent management system CMS Each laboratory exercise is presented to the user through tabs and such division will be implemented into Moodle based platform for e learning course Basic information Theoretical explanations Instruc tions Feedback questionnaire for lab evaluation 3 After booking in a given time space Users could re motely program given set of exercises over the
11. ystem Let us connect inputs 1A and iB to two switches and output oY to a LED You can always refer to the complete list of FPGA pins on E2LP platform and to which components they are connected Pin assignment is done in a special tool for that the Xilinx PlanAhead It can be run from Xilinx ISE 27 28 E E LP Board Front Panel 2lp piap pl Board PROCEEDINGS OF THE E2LP WORKSHOP WARSAW 2014 Fig 5 Evolution of the exercise on GUI web interface If configuration completes without errors the FPGA DONE diode on the board should be turned on meaning that the FPGA is configured and working If you change the state of the switches connected to inputs 1A and iB you should observe the corresponding change to the LED connected to output oY based on a Boolean function which the circuit implements NAND Fig 5 IV CONCLUSIONS Proposed solutions based on integrated together Remote Laboratory components and e learning Moodle Platform enable student to acquire desired knowledge about digital systems and significantly support learning process Remote laboratory and e learning portal enable user to access E2LP base board over the Internet configure it compiling VHDL code and having feedback immediately on his own computer In the same time he can monitor E2LP base board and operate on remote laboratories equipment LISTING UCF CONSTRAIN FILE DEFINITION OF THE DIGITAL SYSTEM FROM FIGURE 4 NET iB LOC Y24 NET oY
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