Adding New Features to New and Existing Remote Experiments through their Integration in WebLab-Deusto

Abstract

During the last decade, efforts have been made in the development and publishing of remote experiments for educational purposes. In order to reduce the duplicity of work and to improve the common requirements that are shared by different remote laboratories, remote experiment management platforms have been developed, such as MIT iLabs, LabShare Sahara or WebLab-Deusto. In this paper, we describe how the development of experiments is handled in WebLab-Deusto, supporting both managed (developed used the APIs provided by WebLab-Deusto) and unmanaged experiments (using Virtual Machines or LabVIEW), and comparing both approaches. It also shows the results of integrating remote experiments under this system, with the use case of VISIR, the electronics remote laboratory developed in BTH

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“…After a student has logged in, waited in the queue in case other students were using the experiment and sent a file that will be programmed in the FPGA the virtual control panel appears. To create it in the WebLab-Deusto environment, several libraries can be utilized for Java Applets, Adobe Flash and JavaScript, so the client only needs to perform calls to a common API to send and receive commands and files from the server [11]. As a result, switches, buttons and the screen of the webcam appear in the web page (Fig.…”

“…The aforementioned alignment of structures is noticeable in the WebLab-Deusto environment [11]. In this context, remote laboratories are investigated how they can be integrated into the WebLab-Deusto system.…”

“…Also in the background it is defined that after a button has been pressed what command has to go through the API to the server. [11] On the server side another set of libraries can be utilized such as C, C++, Java, .NET, Python or LabVIEW. Each time a command or file is sent to the server, it enables the proper response to be displayed in the web page.…”

Using Node-HTTP-Proxy for Remote Experiment Data Transmission Traversing Firewall

“…Consequently, more and more remote laboratory software systems have selected to use the Browser-Server architecture technology. Examples include iLab [9], WebLab-Deusto [10], the Networked Control System Laboratory (NCSLab) [12], the improved NCSLab 3-D [13], the eComLab at UTSA [14] among others. In particular, the eComLab, which was designed and developed in the University of Texas at San Antonio, used SSH tunneling via HTTPS port 443 to address data transmission security while not being blocked by firewall.…”

An Experiment Scheduler and Federated Authentication Solution for Remote Laboratory Access

“…Consequently, a number of Remote Laboratory Management Systems (RLMS) have used the browserserver architecture technology. Examples include LiLa (Library of Labs) [3], JT-60U [4], WebLab-Deusto [5], the Networked Control System Laboratory (NCSLab) [6], among others. Although each of these systems are based on a different implementation approach, they have a similar general purpose: to manage and support shared access to a collection of remote laboratories.…”