General guidelines for using remote lab experiments

In order to run experiments on this web site, remote user must have LabVIEW Run-time Engine 8.5 installed on his personal computer. For remote experiments visualization, remote user must also install client application WebCam Client.
NOTE: during LabVIEW Run-time Engine and WebCam Client installation process administrator privileges are required!

Experiments
Links to all remote lab experiments are available in menu Exsperiments.

Experiment booking
Each experiment web page contains run/book this experiment link. After selecting this link, new web page with 7-day calendar (booking table) appears (Figure 1). The calendar page shows the local time (at the user’s time zone), which may of course be different from the server time. The time conversion takes place automatically, so that users at any time zone see the free / booked slots market according to their local time zones.Each cell of booking table contains one of the following icons:

- add reservation
- remove reservation
- experiment reservation is not possible, because an experiment is already reserved by other user
- experiment reservation is not possible

By clicking on the book icon (), the client performs experiment booking. After this, experiment name appears in selected one-hour time slot. Any reserved time slot may be released by its owner, by clicking on the unbook icon ().

Figure 1: Booking timetable

Experiment execution
When the reserved slot becomes the current one-hour slot, a red arrow icon () appears near the experiment name. Red arrow icon represents a valid link to the remote experiment (Figure 2). After selecting this link, experiment graphical user interface (GUI) appears. Remote user can take control over experiment using right click on the experiment GUI and then by selecting Request Control of VI option in pop menu (Figure 3).
At the end of experimentation, remote user should release control of virtual instrument. This can be easily achieved by closing the web browser.

Figure 2: Booking slot - link to experiment

Figure 3: Request control of virtual instrument

Experiment visualization
Remote experiment visualization is not integrated in remote panel of experiment, but uses separate LabVIEW application called WebCam Client which is always on top of other windows and can be freely moved around the desktop or minimized (figure 4). Server sends the table of active cameras with corresponding URLs and experiment titles to the client application where the student can chose the camera from the list of friendly experiment titles. At the moment server application runs on the computer with host name www.weblab.si.

Figure 4: Front panel of client application