Low cost test platform for a basic electrical measurements laboratory

In introductory circuit analysis and electronics laboratories students face multiple challenges. They must be able to measure, discover, analyze, or explain electrical phenomena or principles using test sets that in general are not user friendly, do not talk to each other, and are limited in their data collection, processing, printing, and plotting capabilities. Sometimes the effort required to collect the data may even shadow the main objective of the laboratory, experiment, or design project being conducted. Hispanic minorities typically also face the additional problem of having to deal with instrument manuals and instructions written in English, a second language for them. Moreover, to educational institutions, basic electrical measurements test sets represent a major acquisition investment. As a proposed solution, a low cost, user friendly test platform has been developed. It consists of a personal computer with a multifunction PCI data acquisition card controlled by a graphical programming language.