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Session 2648

New Laboratory Experiments in Analog Electronics Courses Using Microcomputer-Based Instrumentation and LabVIEWl

R. Papannareddy Purdue University North Central Westville, IN 46391

ABSTRACT This paper describes the new laboratory experiments conducted in an analog electronics course by using a microcomputer-based workstation. The microcomputer-based workstation consists of programmable electronic instruments interfaced with LabVIEW through IEEE 488.2 interface. LabVIEW is utilized to build virtual instruments for each laboratory experiment. Experiments related to the temperature effects on the DC power supply and amplifier circuits were conducted. The Microsoft Works and PSpice packages are also integrated into each workstation for report writing and circuit simulation.

I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, several colleges and universities have integrated the personal computer with modern electronic equipment for automated laboratory measurements 1-4. The development of Microcomputer-Based Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory (MBEIL) can be accomplished by using the plug-in data acquisition boards or using IEEE 488 interfaced programmable electronic equipment. Even though, the workstation based on the stand- alone instruments controlled by a PC over a IEEE 488 interface is expensive, it has many advantages. First, the instruments could be used either under the computer control or independently, which is a significant benefit in an academic environment. Second, IEEE-488 interface is an industry standard and the programmable instruments satisfy the stringent specifications as well as offer special measurement features. More importantly, the students are exposed to the state-of-the-art electronic equipment and some of the cumbersome analog circuit experiments can be replaced with the automated data acquisition techniques.

In this work, we extend the computer-based data acquisition techniques 6-7 to conduct the new laboratory experiments in analog electronics courses in a two-year electrical engineering technology curriculum. Section II describes the setup of MBEIL workstations and Section III discusses the application software. Section IV outlines the list of experiments along with the plan of study. The results are presented in Section V. Finally, the project is summarized in Section VI.

II. MBEIL WORKSTATION Figure 1 shows a typical MBEIL workstation. A typical MBEIL workstation consists of programmable equipment such as DMM, digital storage oscilloscope, power supply, and

1 This project is sponsored under NSF-ILI award 9550836.

{~xd~ 1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings ‘.,+,RYR’:

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Papannareddy, R. (1996, June), New Laboratory Experiments In Analog Electronics Courses Using Microcomputer Based Instrumentation And Lab View Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--6207