1. Use this laboratory in class¶
Note
This is part of the LabsLand Electronics laboratory documentation for educators using VISIR.
If you are interested in the next-generation version of this laboratory, the LabsLand Hive, please go to:
Or this same document in the Hive version:
https://labsland.com/pub/docs/experiments/hive/en/use_this_laboratory.html
1.1. What is VISIR?¶
This laboratory is called VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems In Reality), developed by the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden), under the leadership of Ingvar Gustavsson. You have a great video explaining the role of this extraordinary person here that changed the landscape of remote education:
VISIR is a remote laboratory: it is real equipment that can be manipulated from the Internet. The following picture:
Fig. 1.1.1 VISIR system¶
You can see that there are several boards on top of a National Instruments PXI equipment. In each board, there is a set of relays:
Fig. 1.1.2 VISIR board¶
Where the university that can connect different components (resistors, diodes, capacitors, transistors, etc.). Then, the system can be configured in a way that whenever the student wires a circuits (e.g., put two resistors in series and connect them to the multimeter), physically, in real time, the relays involved are connected and therefore physically the circuit is built, and the multimeter can measure the real results. This process takes a fraction of a second, so the system supports over a 100 students using the same equipment at the same time. If 10 students take a measurement at the same time, each request will be processed and the last student will have waited around one or two seconds.
1.2. What is LabsLand?¶
LabsLand is a global network of real laboratories, available online. VISIR is one of the LabsLand laboratories (Physics, Electronics, FPGA, Arduino, Chemistry, Biology and others). Universities and schools can access different VISIR systems in different locations through LabsLand.
In the particular case of VISIR, LabsLand is a core contributor to the VISIR software, as well as a company that was in charge of several deployments, including:
Deployment at TU Dortmund (Germany)
Deployment at UNED (Costa Rica)
1.3. How to use this laboratory in class?¶
LabsLand provides two kind of services:
Access existing VISIR laboratories purchasing licenses for your students
Deploy your own VISIR laboratory in your institution
In both cases, LabsLand supports the integration of VISIR in different Learning Management Systems (such as Canvas, Moodle, Sakai, Google Classroom) and others.
For any of these options check the LabsLand website and contact LabsLand for more details at sales@labsland.com!