Using LabVIEW to Bridge Industrial Solutions with the Classroom

Author(s):
Jonathan Javis - Samford University

Industry:
University/Education

Products:
PXI/CompactPCI, LabVIEW

The Challenge:
Creating a bridge that joins industrial grade software and hardware solutions to educational experiences of undergraduate students in the physics laboratory.

The Solution:
Creating a laboratory paradigm that combines the best flexible solutions in data acquisition hardware and software with educationally standard sensors.

A High-Fidelity Solution
The most progressive undergraduate physics laboratories predominately rely on computer-based instrumentation. Traditional methods of measurement and analysis quickly become inadequate in comparison to the high quality computer-based solutions now available. Although complete commercial solutions for classroom teaching exist, these solutions lack the authenticity and versatility to provide usefulness beyond the teaching laboratory. This paper examines a high-fidelity solution of a union between industrial grade software and hardware components and the educational experience of physics undergraduate students.

The Industrial Interface: The SPILL Box
We created an industrial quality interface box and LabVIEW software solutions, which are compatible with many of the most widely used educational sensors. At Samford University, we computerized our general physics laboratory using these interfaces. We call the lab the Samford Physics Instrumented Learning Laboratory, or the SPILL lab, with the interfaces called SPILL boxes.

The SPILL box is a specially configured National Instruments CA-1000 enclosure. By using CA-1000 modules, along with additional connectors and an internal power supply, we configured the SPILL box to complete more than 16 computerized experiments for the first-year undergraduate physics laboratory. We use much of the functionality of the PCI-MIO-16E-4 data acquisition card, incorporating analog channels ACH0 through ACH5, wired in differential mode, digital input/output line, DIO0, and counter timers GPCTR0 and GPCTR1. The internal power supply in the CA-1000 provides 5 and 12-volt internal/external excitation.

Software and Data Acquisition Strategies
Each experiment requires the use of one or more interface types on the CA-1000. Depending what type of signal generation or data acquisition we need, we require various software strategies. For our laboratories, we constructed a LabVIEW application that runs all 16 experiments. Types of acquisition include: simple analog channel acquisition using ACH0 through ACH5, measurements of transitions in signal state, and measurements of frequency and period for state transitions. For analog channel measurement, software strategies include: simple oversampled acquisition, including consideration of Nyquist’s theorem for AC measurements, and simple buffered acquisition with oversampling. For counter timer measurements, software strategies include: event counting, pulse width measurement, and buffered semi-period measurement using GPCTR0 and GPCTR1 with DIO0 triggering.

Cost and Time Efficiency
The CA-1000 interfaces are a tremendous success in our laboratories. We found that these devices required considerably low development time with each taking about three man hours for completion. We designed this solution in the most cost-effective way possible using industrial grade hardware. Because of the high industrial quality of the National Instruments products that we used, the solution itself does not cost less than existing commercial packages that perform similar acquisitions.

The CA-1000 configuration has application and implications that extend far beyond the educational classroom and into graduate school and real industrial settings, while the previously mentioned educational solutions have no authentic value outside of a classroom setting. Cost effectiveness includes not only the price of the solution, but also of the usefulness of its implications. The authentic learning that the students are exposed to through these hardware and LabVIEW software strategies makes this the most cost-effective solution possible, in the big picture.

We would like to thank Samford University for its continued financial support in bringing industrial solutions into physics education, and also National Instruments for its generous donation of a LabVIEW departmental site license.

For more information, contact: 

Dr. Perry A. Tompkins

Professor, Physics Department

Samford University

800 Lakeshore Drive

Birmingham, Alabama, 35229

Tel: 205/726-4121

E-mail: patompki@samford.edu

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