How it works?

Figure 1 shows a workbench in a traditional electronics laboratory. Most instruments in such a laboratory have a remote control option but the solder less breadboard has not.

To open a workbench for remote access a circuit wiring manipulator possible to control remotely is required. A relay switching matrix can serve as such a device where the relays are arranged in a three dimensional pattern together with instrument connectors and component sockets.

The small components in the lower left corner of Figure 1 are the component set delivered by the instructor. They are installed in the component sockets of the matrix. Virtual front panels depicting the front panels of the desktop instruments and a virtual breadboard displayed on the computer screen can give distant students the impression that they are working in the real laboratory. A workbench opened in this way can be, for example, a node in a grid laboratory where the virtual breadboard and relay switching matrix combination is a wiring service, Figure 2. The instruments connected to the matrix are omitted.

The virtual breadboard is shown in Figure 3. A set of virtual components provided for a certain lab session is displayed in a component box adjacent to the breadboard. The lab client routine transforms the virtual circuits that an experimenter wires on the breadboard using the mouse into a net list similar to PSPICE net lists. In the grid node a virtual instructor compares each net list with a number of so called check lists defining circuit loops permitted to be created and maximum voltages to be output from the sources. If the list passes the check it is transferred to the Circuit Builder. This routine transforms the list to addresses of the relays to be engaged to form the desired circuit.

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