A novel design for e-laboratories: Simultaneously accessible experimental application platform

One of the crucial issues in web-based laboratories allowing remote access to real experiments is their insufficiency for allowing simultaneous access to multiple users. As a solution to this problem, this study presents the design and implementation of an e-laboratory that allows conducting experiments by more than one users at the same time through a single experimental platform and the same server. For the case study, some experiments of Electrical Machines course, which has an important role in Electrical and Electronics Engineering syllabus, are selected. In this context, basic experiments of some widely used machines in industrial applications like direct current machines, stepper motors and servo motors can be conducted simultaneously by using the platform achieved. A FPGA controller is used for the main control process of the system. Thanks to the FPGA's capability of parallel operation, simultaneous access to experiments are provided easily and data transfer is performed more quickly as well as reliably. Users can carry out any experiment remotely by connecting to the related experimental set via the designed web pages and can analyze all experimental results both graphically and numerically. The cost and the dimension of the system is decreased because of using just a single controller and only one server as well. Besides, the system can be expanded easily because of the ability to add new experimental sets simply. Thus, the study contributes to e-laboratory applications by presenting a novel and innovative approach.