Developing Computer Based Laboratory Instruments In A New Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Program (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
The Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Texas at Tyler has a required twosemester sequence in electronic devices and circuits. The second course of this series (EENG 4409, Electronic Circuit Analysis II) includes a traditional laboratory component with exercises in amplifiers, active filters, non-linear circuits, oscillators, and CMOS devices. The laboratory exercise in active filters required measurement of complex voltage gain (magnitude and phase shift) of various low-pass, bandpass, and high-pass filters, a state-variable filter, and an all-pass (phase-shift) filter. The tediousness and repetitiveness of manual measurement elicited student complaints and obscured the purpose of the experiment. An automated instrument to measure voltage gain was conceived in response to this problem. Development took place in EENG 4409 in the spring of 1999 as Project TUNA (Texas Universal Network Analyzer). The prototype instrument was used with success in the active-filter laboratory exercise prior to the end of the semester. Project TUNA allowed the course lectures to be enriched with material on phasesensitive demodulation and design of constant phase-difference (quadrature) networks. The prototype has since been used as a laboratory instrument in other courses and construction of permanent copies is planned. This paper describes the Project TUNA instrument and the integration of its development into EENG 4409, including lessons learned along the way.
Project Tuna Ii Bode Analyzer And Teaching Tool
2006 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Students measuring the frequency response of a linear circuit (e.g., an active filter) by manual methods find the task mind-numbing and repetitive, and the purpose was frequently lost in the minutiae of data-taking. Project TUNA (Texas Universal Network Analyzer), a Bode analyzer for low to moderate frequencies, was conceived as an answer to this problem. The prototype of Project TUNA was developed as a project in Electronics II (EENG 4409) in 1999, and permanent copies were constructed in 2000. Project TUNA has been integrated into the electronics curriculum of UT-Tyler since that time. It is used as both a laboratory instrument and as a teaching tool, particularly to illustrate the principles of phase-sensitive demodulation.
An Electronic Instrumentation Design Project for Computer Engineering Students
Education, IEEE …, 2005
Ongoing technological progress in electronic instrumentation triggered the development of an innovative, hands-on teaching program to help students toward a fuller understanding of recent changes in the field. This paper describes the different stages of a design project to teach electronic instrumentation to computer engineering students at the University of Oviedo, Gijón, Spain. The project involves designing a weather station to measure the main meteorological variables and then displaying this information on a computer screen. Although this course is intended for nonspecialist students of electronics, it could easily be adapted to other syllabuses with minimum modification of the specifications. The course provides not only enhanced academic training but also increased student motivation, as students participate actively in all course activities and work in a team within which each student has specific responsibilities.
A Circuits Ii Laboratory Accessible By Internet
2002 Annual Conference Proceedings
A remotely accessible laboratory for the Circuits II course has been developed to permit students to access the laboratory from their home computers. The equipment is based on a Cytec switch matrix and a dsp SigLab 20-22. The laboratory exercises familiarize students with the operations of signal generators, oscilloscopes, network analyzers, spectrum analyzers and remotely operated instruments. The advantages of the laboratory are that the cost is less than the cost of one moderately well equipped station in a typical laboratory. Also, the lab can be accessed at any time. The laboratory, as currently configured, supports 10 different exercises, including characterization of RC and LRC circuits. A limitation is that the system as currently configured will accommodate only one student at a time but we believe can be expanded to accommodate four at a time.
National Instruments' LabVIEW has become a popular programming environment for data acquisition in academia and industry. Most LabVlEWreference materials require a significant investment oftime. At the University of San Diego (USD). we wanted to provide an introduction to LabVIEW f o r all electrical engineering majors without adding additional classes or laborutories to the curriculum. During a summer research experience, two electrical engineering juniors at USD wrote a tutorial on LabVIEW and designed a one-hour exercise to introduce students to LabVIEW. The exercise allowed students to obtain the amplitudefrequency response o f a simple RC circuit using a function generator and an oscilloscope. Students had previously done this experiment manually in their sophomore circuits'clnss. Thus the concepts ofthe lob were familiar and they couldfocus on the advantages ofhaving LabVlEW automate the data acquisition and analysis. Twenty-one students in a junior-level Electronics course performed the "Introduction to LabVIEW" exercise in Fall 2001.
Project Guise: Curricular Introduction And Resources For Teaching Instrumentation
2007 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Project GUISE (General-purpose, Universal Instrumentation System for Education) is a computer-based laboratory instrument combining LabVIEW virtual-instrumentation software and custom external hardware developed with support of the National Science Foundation under grant DUE 9952292. Descriptions of its development have been previously published. However, an opportunity to use Project GUISE in the curriculum had not yet occurred at that time. It was created expressly to support a senior-level course in instrumentation and measurement systems, but only recently did that course gain sufficient interest and enrollment to be taught. Project GUISE has now had its introduction to the instructional setting; students have used it to create instrumentation applications such as thermocouple thermometers, a weighing scale using an aluminum cantilever instrumented with a strain gage, a displacement-measurement system using an LVDT, and an optically-coupled isolation amplifier. Other experiments (such as design and test of a carrier amplifier and measurement of the common-mode rejection ratio of the Project GUISE instrumentation amplifier) will be available for the next offering of the instrumentation course. Curricular resources written for Project GUISE include tutorials and background information on the subjects of the experiments, a spreadsheet for design of thermocouple thermometers, and a hardware description (including schematics) of the Project GUISE instrument that may be used in conjunction with upperlevel courses in electronics. The proposed paper will describe the curricular introduction of Project GUISE (including student reactions to its use) and accompanying curricular resources and reference materials (including virtual-instrument software). Brief history of project Project GUISE was developed as part of a collection of unique computer-based laboratory instruments with support of the National Science Foundation under grant DUE 9952292. These instruments, combining custom external hardware and LabVIEW virtual-instrumentation software (National Instruments, Austin, TX), were built on the model of Project TUNA, a Bode analyzer developed as a class project in a secondsemester junior electronics course 1. The other instruments developed under this grant were integrated into regular curricular use some time ago; however, Project GUISE was described in earlier work 2,3 but it not introduced into curricular use until 2005 because the course for which it was intended (EENG 4302, Measurement and Instrumentation Systems) did not gain sufficient student interest before then for it to have been offered. Project GUISE instrument hardware Project GUISE is a collection of basic instrumentation-system building blocks. Instrumentation systems are constructed by connecting the appropriate blocks using external cabling and, in some cases, additional external electronic components.
An inexpensive PC-based laboratory configuration for teaching electronic instrumentation
IEEE Transactions on Education, 1994
The need for enhanced undergraduate laboratory teaching aids has been identified by the staff of the instrumentation laboratory at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of the West Indies [l]. Although there are currently a number of interesting and powerful educational products on the market, they are typically produced in the developed countries and are sometimes inappropriate for applications in developing countries. They are also often very expensive. This paper describes a laboratory configuration and a set of tools designed and implemented at the University of the West Indies for undergraduate instruction in electronic Instrumentation. The laboratory configuration encompasses a number of personal computer (PC) stations and model engineering systems. The model systems mimic realistic engineering processes under interrogation and control from the remote PC stations. A set of inexpensive hardware tools for data acquisition and control of the model systems, as well as for general laboratory test and measurement, are described. Useful software tools are also mentioned.
2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 1975. He then joined Schlumberger where he held R&D and manufacturing management positions in the U.S. and France. Dr. McCann was President of two global business units within Schlumberger and retired in 1999. Since that time, he has served as an Adjunct Professor in the ECE Department at The University of Texas at Austin where he teaches circuit analysis, design, engineering economics and project management.
Integrated engineering workstations in electrical engineering laboratories
IEEE Transactions on Education, 1989
This paper provides a description of integrated engineering workstations (IEW's) used in undergraduate electrical engineering laboratories. The IEW's are used for the design, analysis, and testing of engineering systems. Examples of laboratory experiments and software programs are presented.
An introduction to LabVIEW exercise for an electronics class
32nd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2002
National Instruments' LabVIEW has become a popular programming environment for data acquisition in academia and industry. Most LabVIEW reference materials require a significant investment of time. At the University of San Diego (USD), we wanted to provide an introduction to LabVIEW for all electrical engineering majors without adding additional classes or laboratories to the curriculum. During a summer research experience, two electrical engineering juniors at USD wrote a tutorial on LabVIEW and designed a one-hour exercise to introduce students to LabVIEW. The exercise allowed students to obtain the amplitude frequency response of a simple RC circuit using a function generator and an oscilloscope. Students had previously done this experiment manually in their sophomore circuits' class. Thus the concepts of the lab were familiar and they could focus on the advantages of having LabVIEW automate the data acquisition and analysis. Twenty-one students in a junior-level Electronics course performed the "Introduction to LabVIEW" exercise in Fall 2001.