In addition, it requires skills in both real measurement instrument usage and the personal development of fault search methodologies specifically targeted toward digital or analog circuits. Moreover, the ability to diagnose real circuit faults is a typical high-value engineering skill that must be pursued.
#MULAB 7 SET INPUT SOURCE VERIFICATION#
Therefore, hardware verification is necessary. In fact, the major drawback of simulation performed inside courses is the lack of coverage of the tests, mainly due to student inexperience and time shortages.
However, the last two items are, nowadays, not affordable at all.įirst of all, it must be emphasized that simulation cannot fully substitute measurements performed on the real circuit. Points (a) through (c) can be easily accomplished with the web-based methodologies described above.
In fact, developing design capabilities requires acquiring the following abilities: What is missing in this approach is the contact with real-world objects, which, according to us, is fundamental for the acquirement of specific engineering skills. Later, they can perform analog, digital, or mixed-signal simulations, utilizing web interfaces toward standard simulation tools (Spice, Modelsim). As an example, in analog and digital electronics courses, students can design circuits, either via schematic capture or Hardware Description Languages (VHDL, Verilog, SystemC). Moreover, web applications allowing us to exploit interactivity in simulated environments, such as Moodle, are of widespread usage, and can be used to introduce exercises and simulated laboratory experiments, in which, students can interact with virtual objects, changing their parameters and simulating the behaviour of the so-modified experiments.Įlectronics engineering courses are natural candidates for these kinds of web-based tools. Nowadays, host virtualization and private or public clouds are already used inside universities, allowing us to deploy into the campus remote access to computing platforms, even at a supranational level. Ĭurrent Internet capabilities allow us to overcome difficulties related to lectures, as videoconferencing is a well-established technique, even if there are some challenges that arise when the number of attendants goes beyond some hundreds if direct interactivity is desired (this concerns real-time lessons, and not just playing recorded videos). This means that teaching ’in presence’ was stopped, too, in schools of every rank, from primary up to universities. Lockdown countermeasures were mandatory in order to mitigate virus spread among the population. Starting from the spring of 2020, the SARS-CoV2 pandemic hit China, Italy, and the rest of the world. The board has been successfully used in master’s degrees and PhD courses. A first board, suitable for analog and digital electronics experiments, has been designed and manufactured, and is described in this paper. It contains both programmable prototyping circuitry based on a microcontroller and an FPGA and a set of measurement instruments, similar to the ones found on a typical lab desk, such as a digital storage oscilloscope, multimeter, analog signal generator, logic state analyzer and digital pattern generator. In this paper, the design and development of a very-low-cost experimental board tailored to these needs is presented. A possible solution would be to distribute to students, at home, electronics equipment suitable for laboratory experiments, but no reasonable product is currently available off-the-shelf. Electronics teaching requires real laboratory experiences for students, which cannot be realized if access to physical infrastructures is prohibited. The recent SARS-CoV2 pandemic has put a great challenge on university courses.