PAPER REMOTE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT APPLIED TO ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING Remote Educational Experiment Applied To Electrical Engineering http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijoe.v9i1.2298 J.M.Neto 1 , S. Paladini 2 , C.E.Pereira 2 , R. Marcelino 3 , V. Gruber 3 , J.B. Silva 3 1 School of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering SATC, Criciúma-SC (Brazil) 2 School of Engineering UFRGS, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Porto Alegre-Rs (Brazil) 3 UFSC, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Ararangua-SC (Brazil) Abstract—This article presents the development of an architecture for a remote educational experiment concern- ing the speed control applied to a direct current motor. The proposed architecture is based on the use of an Arduino Uno and Ethernet Shield, whose function is to interface between the experiment and the Internet. The user can access the control experiment through an application developed in Java, which allows the students to choose the model of the controller (P, PI and PID) they want to study, change its parameters and the system response visualization through graphics and webcam. Results show the potential of the application of such architecture to remote experimenta- tion context concerning engineering, mainly to the specific area of control systems. Index Terms—Remote Experiment; Rotation control. I. INTRODUCTION During the last decade there was a rapid development of computer networks and the Internet. The WWW (World Wide Web), one of the most popular Internet services, provided the means of publishing and accessing large volumes of information in textual and multimedia formats. Those WWW characteristics were potential to the development of environments for distance education. [1] Currently educational methods have been changing. Students have found it difficult to adapt to the traditional teaching techniques still used in the classroom. New methods of teaching, called desirable methods, are alterna- tives that have appeared and showed to be necessary for this new generation of “plugged-in people ". [2] Nowadays, engineers, technologists and researchers whose necessities, applications and requirements change very quickly, need the flexibility to create their own solutions. That is a reality in the labor market, and even more in the academic environment, where students need freedom to experiment without being afraid of damaging some equipment. However real experiments installed in the educational institutions laboratories are generally expensive, that is, besides the cost of the equipment, the institution needs to pay for the maintenance, installation and possible replacement of materials used in the real experience. And the increase in the number of students demands an increase in the number of laboratories at universities and other educational institutions. "Educating in an information society means much more than training people to use information and communica- tion technologies: it means investing in building compe- tences large enough to give them an effective role in the production of goods and services, in making decisions based on knowledge, in operating smoothly the new ways and tools at their work, as well as creatively applying new media, whether in simple and routine uses, or in more sophisticated applications. It means training individuals to learn skills so that they can deal positively with the technological base continuous transformation "[3]. The remote experimentation appears as an extremely interesting alternative to the limited availability of univer- sity laboratories in Brazil, since it can be accessed at any time and is connected to the worldwide computer network available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Due to its access availability, it becomes easy for the user to interact with the virtual practical activity.[7] It usually consists of a set of software and hardware technologies that can take many different configurations depending on the choice of technological resources employed in its implementation. It is well known that at laboratories it is possible to ap- ply and test theoretical knowledge in practical situations. The teaching of control and automation systems put students in contact with real situations allowing them to make comparisons of classical and modern theory with practice. Thus, the purpose of this study is the development of a remote experiment focused on the aid of practical activi- ties carried out by the Electrical Engineering and similar courses, relating to the discipline of control systems, in order to assist students in understanding the content taught in classrooms. In this context, this paper proposes a remote educational experiment of a current motor (DC motor) control speed, which allow the students to interact with the control systems P, PI, PID applied to the rotation control of the remote mode engine. II. EXPERIMENT ARCHITECTURE Figure 1 shows the basic diagram of the architecture of the remote experiment, where the main features concern- ing the proposed structure are detailed below. A. Hardware Implementation This block is composed of an Arduino Uno, which has the electronic board based on the chip ATmega328, manufactured by Atmel. It controls the electric motor by reading the cue generator. To carry out the connections of the proposed experiment, the network Internet is used as means of communication between the user and the remote iJOE – Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2013 47