Swilab: a Virtual Laboratory for Electronics

A virtual laboratory, SWILAB, useful to develop and carry out fully simulated experiences on electrical and electronic circuits by using instrumentation simulators is proposed. SWILAB, running on Windows 95 or superior, includes several instruments like waveform generators, analog and digital oscilloscopes, analog and digital voltmeters and a Device Under Test (circuit simulator), all designed in C++ language. The interfaces between the instruments and the user are like the actual ones and the control panels were designed with a real look (containing all the instrument displays, connectors and control knobs). Particular care was devoted to make actual the action-effect relationship between the knob setting and the command execution. The connections among the electronic instruments and between the instruments and the DUT (Device Under Test) is realized by a SW communication channel and is completely transparent to the user. The connection is performed simply by drag and drop techniques between the connectors to be linked. The virtual laboratory is now used by students of regular courses in several Italian universities and in distance learning courses, with an high satisfaction level and didactic effectiveness.