Designing and implementing a standalone configurable lab server application.
Abstract
This project was done so as to have laboratory hosting server for online electronics experiments
to be conducted by students in large numbers because of the high cost of the many Equipment
(National Instruments ELVIS II board hardware) required for each student, Tis project allows
sharing of the same equipment among many students in the shortest time possible. National
Instruments ELVIS II board hardware is used for hosting electronic circuits under study,
connected to the computers via a USB interface. The USB interface enables access to the
function generator, oscilloscope and digital I/O which are used by the software on the host
computer.
A data socket server streams live instrument data available from the experiment and an http web
API built using ASP.NET Web API2.0 gets commands during experimentation.
Core server applications are embedded in windows service application which for the server to
start when the system boots and also runs with high privileges for functionality of all
components.
A Graphical User Interface Application was built using windows presentation foundation (WPF)
framework for lab administrator interactions to allow setup of the lab.
The result of the project is a windows program installer, which takes a user through installation
steps and allows configuring of various parameters for online experiments.