2009 Second International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation

Remote Control Laboratory Based On LabVIEW

Li Pengfei Nie Luhua

College of Electronics and Information College of Electronics and Information
Xi ' an Polytechnic University Xi ' an Polytechnic University
Xi ' an, China Xi ' an, China
li6208@163.com nieluhua@yahoo.cn

Abstract This paper studied a remote control system based
on the LabVIEW and ZLG PCI-5110 CAN card, in which
students could perform experiments by remote control
laboratory via the Internet. Due to the fact that the internet
becomes more integrated into our daily lives, several
possibilities have arisen to use this cost-effective worldwide
standard for distributing data. National Instruments
LabVIEW is available to publish data from the development
environment to the Web. The student can access the remote
laboratory and perform experiments without any limitation of
time and location. They can also observe the signals by
changing the parameters of the experiment and evaluating the
results. During the session, the teacher can watch and
communicate with students who perform their experiment.
The usefulness of remote laboratory in teaching environments
is already known: it saves equipment, personnel for the
institution and it saves time and money for the remote
students. It also allows the same equipment to be used in
research purposes by many teams, through Internet. The
experiments proved the feasibility of technical solutions, as
well as the correctness of implementation in this paper.
experimental data can be returned, but also LabVIEW
platform in the G Web server or DataSocket server, with the
support of the data posted to the Internet online. In
particular, it is necessary to add the LabVIEW code that
handles the communication with the remote client and with
the video camera that provides the adequate visual feedback
of the behaviour of the plant in the laboratory [6]. When
connected to the network terminal to receive data, terminal
can browse, display or for further processing, that is, at any
time and data at the scene to liaise closely; but also by the
network terminal control commands issued through the
network spread to the system controller, which is a remote
control functions. This can be done in time to maintain the
same step-by-step, geographically unrestricted.

Keywordsremote laboratory , LabVIEW, ZLG PCI-5110

CAN card,DLL.

I. INTRODUCTION
The constant technological progress of the Internet and
in the field of tele-communications and information
technologies inspired a new method of training aimed at
broadening the concept of teaching, training and working.
Remote control of installations and systems has been a
technical reality in the automated industries for many years,
particularly in process control industries. Due to the
stringent demands of industry, a variety of bus systems have
been developed to operate at the different hierarchical levels
found in automated systems. One of the most commonly
used applications for remote control systems involves client-
server architectures [11]. The structure of a client-server Figure 1. Structure of a remote-controlled laboratory
based remotely controlled laboratory is shown in Figure 1.
Shown in Figure 1 from the system structure can be The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes
clearly seen, on-site experimental device control commands the System Architecture, which includes the fundamental
issued from the site server, through LabVIEW call the aspects required to create virtual and remote control
DLL(Dynamic Link Library) file of ZLG CAN PCI-5110 laboratories using LabVIEW and Easy Simulations. Section
Driver and posted to the CAN- bus then the data is 3 introduced the expert software design and how to use
imported PLC through the RS485 port by unshielded twisted LabVIEW to call a dynamic link library (controlcan.dll) to
after convert by CAN485MB Intelligent Protocol achieve control of ZLG CAN PCI-5110[2]. Finally, some
Converter.PLC can control the experimental equipment and conclusions and considerations about further work are given.

978-0-7695-3804-4/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE 82

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DOI 10.1109/ICICTA.2009.737
 II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
In our approach, we have used LabVIEW 8.6 to develop
our own custom interface panels for all instruments for
remote control operation from client side. We have
incorporated all the major features of an actual instrument in
our interface to be controlled from client side. We have
designed five experiments based on practically used
automated industries that are theoretically taught in most of
the control courses. The user interfaces for all the
experiments have been designed in a manner to give the
remote client a basic understanding of a particular control
technique.
The overall architecture of the system( as shown in
Figure 1) consists of designing five hardware experiments ,a
elevator, a water tank, a synchronous dual-axis ,a screw and
a Web Camera.
Server with data acquisition card, ZLG CAN PCI-
5110 interface card and Video capture card. The
computer is connected to Internet through the
Remote Control Laboratory of Xian Polytechnic Figure 2. Elevator Experimental Platform
University .
Programmable Instruments, Siemens S7-200 B. Screw Experimental Platform
programmable logic controller (PLC).
LabVIEW programming environment with Internet This section describes controlling the screw
Developers Tool-kit. experimental platform as shown in Figure 3.In this
experiment programmable logic controller (PLC)to control
Hardware device ,such as elevator, water tank,
the screw forward and reverse movement and other switch
synchronous dual-axis ,screw, web camera and
action .While the remote experiment is running, the user can
CAN485MB.
change on-line the reference input and some typical
Server with a video camera and an Internet-based controller parameters, and can observe the experiment
video server, (This is very important, because the
signals (command, reference and output) while live video
user will feel that he/she controls the real
window shows what is going on in the remote laboratory .At
instruments remotely instead of simulators.)
the end of the experiment it is possible to download data for
The client through the TCP / IP Protocol and the server
off-line data processing.
somewhere on the Internet (know the IP of the server)
connection, and in the server PCI slot on the motherboard
into a ZLG CAN PCI-5110 Master card, CAN card again
through the twisted pair to RS-485 by the CAN protocol
converters and Siemens S7-200 CPU222 PLC connections,
and under the control of the nodes of terminal equipment.
Video camera affords the remote user a sense of being at the
test bed. In this paper as elevator, screw and Web Server
Configuration for example, introduced the CAN-driven
dynamic LabVIEW function of the call, as well as detailed
analysis the parameters of the function of the dynamic drive.
A. Elevator Experimental Platform
This section deals with controlling the elevator
experimental platform as shown in Figure 2.In this
experiment programmable logic controller (PLC) to control
the elevator up and down floors, open and close doors and
other switch action ,through the PLC's RS-485 interface
access to CAN-bus, client-server through the user interface Figure 3. Screw Experimental Platform
to control the action of elevator, and then return to the
parameters from the PLC in order to LabVIEW for C. Web Server Configuration
simulation, and to work with from a video camera images
To publish VIs on the Web, the Web Server must be
are compared. This experiment corresponding to remote
enabled, which could be done either with the Web
control techniques have been designed under LabVIEW
Publishing Tool, or within the Web Server Configuration
program to real time and virtual applications.
page which is located in the LabVIEW Tools menu at

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Options. The Web Publishing Tool, described in the III. EXPERT SOFTWARE DESIGN
following section, is used to create the HTML files out of In the domain of automatic control, the option to link the
the front panel of a VI. Within the Web Server: remote operation software to the simulation software is
Configuration page you can enable the server, change the favorable, because of the current use of simulation tools in
root directory, the HTTP port, the timeout and if you want to the automatic control laboratories. The most spread
use a log file or not. For all there are default settings which simulation software products are Matlab + Simulink, from
should work with the most applications, so the default port is MathWorks, and LabVIEW, from National Instruments.
80, the timeout is 60 seconds and the root directory, where LabVIEW is an environment that allows the simulation on
the HTML files of the Web Publishing Tool are saved is the basis of a powerful graphic interface. It also allows the
within the LabVIEW www directory[7][10]. Perhaps in access to local equipment, through data acquisition cards
some cases one needs another timeout or has to use another (National Instruments). In our approach we use LabVIEW
port to communicate, than this is the page where to change. to call a dynamic link library (controlcan.dll) to achieve
The Web Publishing Tool is a LabVIEW built-in tool to control of ZLG CAN PCI-5110. National Instruments has
publish the front panel of a VI as a HTML document to the developed Dynamic Link Library (DLL) that is a function
web. Accessible also within the Tools menu of LabVIEW, library to control the LabVIEW applications from different
there are three steps from choosing a VI till saving the programming languages dynamically [4]. Through this DLL,
HTML file to disk. In the first step Select VI and Viewing virtual instruments developed in LabVIEW program can be
Options the VI to publish, which must be in memory, has to integrated into the .NET applications easily. Figure 5 shows
be selected. Also the Viewing Mode can be changed a flow chart of the procedure call DLL and figure 6 below
between Embedded, Snapshot and Monitor, where depicts part of the procedure.
Embedded allows clients to view and control the front panel,
Snapshot to only display a static image of the front panel
and Monitor to display a snapshot with a configurable
updating interval. For the next step Select HTML Output
you can type in a title (document title), a text before (header)
the front panel and a text after (footer) the front panel which
is going to be displayed on the respective place. The next
and also last step of the procedure is the Save the New Web
Page step where the created HTML file of the VI is going
to be saved to a directory with the selected filename and a
URL will be created [3]. After saving it, the VI now is ready
to be remote controlled from a client by typing this URL
into the address or URL field of his Web browser window as
shown in figure 4.

Figure 5. Flow chart of the procedure call DLL

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND CONCLUTIONS

This paper presents a general method to create web-
based remote laboratory experimentation. LabVIEW
environment is adopted for implementation of local
instrument control. The solution for the described system
was adopted after testing and comparing more possible
variants (such as running the code at the client). Then it was
tested inside the university (Intranet), in order to verify the
Figure 4. Remote control laboratory of web-based didactical, technical and security functionality. During the

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tests the students learned quickly the language and
performed the tasks asked by the teacher. So it is confirmed
that the structure is functional and the goal of the work was
reached.
Figure 6. Form CAN control network
It is important to minimize the processing power for
remote experiments visualization .Although setting up of a
remote laboratory can not see the real laboratory as a whole,
still it has been tried to provide students a way of alternate
learning to verify their theoretical knowledge. Integration of
online lectures can be made to the existing system to make
the experiments more interactive for students.
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