Arduino and LabVIEW in educational remote monitoring applications

This paper presents the implementation of Virtual Instrumentation (VI) based system used for remote monitoring of selected environmental parameters: humidity, temperature, light intensity and methane. The educational benefits (learning outcomes) of this application are the following: design and implementation of the monitoring circuitry, programming for both LabVIEW and Arduino, understanding VI concepts and using mobile devices for parameters monitoring. The proposed application was developed by students during Measurements and Virtual Instrumentation programming courses. It includes traditional data acquisition hardware (NI USB 6251) and the Arduino Uno device. A Cinterion MC55ÍT GSM/GPRS terminal is used for sending automatic alerts to authorized mobile phones. E-mail warnings are also available. If established parameters exceed imposed limitations, the warning system will activate. Distance operation of this application is available via LabVIEW Remote Panels technology and Data Dashboard running on iOS. In this way one can use the learning process in the form of a distance laboratory.