Real-Time Teaching with Java: JPR 3

This paper describes a development platform built around a digital railroad scale–model: JPR 3 (Java Platform for Realtime Railway Research). The laboratory equipment and software aims to achieve two goals: help and motivate students of real–time systems and as support for postgraduate students. Students find the scale–model really challenging and are very motivated by it; thus it’s easy for them to really learn and practice all the concepts of real–time systems. But it’s not only for students use: it also serves as a research platform for postgraduate students, thanks to the possibilities offered by the scale–model. Java has been chosen as the programming language codify the platform and the implementation of the system is described in this work.