Contact Information
Country: Brazil
Submission year: 2018
University: Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia São Paulo (IFSP)
List of team members (with the year of graduation):
Carina Yuri Yoshimura - 2020
Gianluca Moreira - 2019
Mariana Sayuri Kuchida - 2019
Marina Toledo González - 2019
Paulo Matheus Vinhas - 2019
Mentor professors:
Alexandre Brincalepe Campo;
Amparo Mejía;
Nidya Aide Monroy Rodriguez.
Primary contact e-mail address: brinca@ifsp.edu.br
Project information
Title: Brazil-Colombia International Project for student integration through the development of state machine-based systems in the NI LabVIEW platform
Description: Temperature and amount of chlorine control in a heated pool.
Products: LabVIEW 2011 and ELVIS II+
The Challenge: Use NI LabVIEW to teach students from another country the development of state machine-based systems on this platform, in an easy way for both sides.
The Solution: Conducting online meetings, Brazilian students were able to teach Colombians about programming style in NI LabVIEW and state machines, using a generic problem and a real problem as the basis.
New video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Xmc0pxacXHE9Dgf0N_kTX6eHtARo2SSu
The focus of this paper is to expose how the Brazilian students (who participate of LabVIEW classes in the NI Student Ambassador program) taught Colombian students to program VIs based on state machine theory. In order to integrate Colombian and Brazilian students, the project advisors intermediated the students by e-mail posteriorly allowing them to contact each other using Skype.
At first, Brazilian students prepared and translated a guide to introduce the LabVIEW interface and commands to Colombian students, with state machines subject, using LabVIEW 2011. From the guide, Colombian students were able to create a state machine that controlled some indicator LEDs on the front panel, using event structures and property nodes to trigger the indicators.
As a second step, the Brazilian students proposed a challenging exercise, based on a real problem, to control the water purification system of a heated pool. In the simulation, there is a tank where the water will be purified, so a valve needs to be opened to fill the tank with the pool water. After reaching a certain level, another valve should open releasing chlorine into the water, while a heater and a mixer are turned on. After reaching the maximum level, the valves should be closed and a third valve should open, releasing the mixture into the pool again. Colombian students, with the Brazilians help, were able to implement a VI with this behavior, which front panel resembles a SCADA method, which controls industrial processes.
Due to the integration of NI hardware and software, that VI was easily modified to read and write the inputs and outputs of ELVIS II +, available at the Brazilian Institute. Through this methodology, it was possible to implement the real problem in the software (the good graphics interface promoted by the Front Panel facilitates the user view of the platform and also the visual way to program into the VI, making easier to identify an error through the debugging tools) as well on the hardware (because is easy to communicate with the software). These advantages provided by LabVIEW and NI Elvis II + facilitated the project to be done separately, in other words, being programmed by Colombian students and physically implemented by Brazilian students. According to the presented, there is a desire to partner with other universities in other countries and let the students help each other during new projects.
Using LabVIEW and NI Elvis II, Brazilian students were able to have a new out-of-class experience of the NI Ambassador program, creating an unstructured problem and teaching Colombian students who had the first contact with LabVIEW and were able to see that it is not difficult to create an application with a good interface and easy communication with hardware.
The challenge proposed for Colombian students and results:
An unheated pool usually is at the temperature of 18°C. On a sunny day, the skin can reach around 40°C and this difference in temperature between human skin and pool water can cause an uncomfortable thermal shock when in contact with water.
Given this condition, it is likely that you want to warm the pool at any time to avoid discomfort due to the cold or the initial heat shock. When installing the heat exchanger and the thermal coating, a heated swimming pool around 35°C results. However, this temperature is ideal for the proliferation of algae and bacteria. According to the presented, it is seen that the treatment of a heated pool is different from that of an unheated pool. Filtration should be more efficient, alkalinity, pH and chlorine level should be strictly controlled.
Water and calcium hypochlorite are added in a tank through separate valve-controlled inputs which are triggered in an automated way. The two components are mixed and then heated. The mixture is then drained by a third valve to the pool. This solution was designed in a Finite State Machine (FSM) (Figure 2) practicing all the points discussed during the conversations and exercises with the Colombian students.
Using NI LabVIEW software (Figure 1), all the states of the project were simulated, obtaining data close to reality. Subsequently, the NI Elvis II was used to assemble the keys and indicators, in order to complement the simulation, obtaining the response time of these components. The result was very satisfactory due to such integration between hardware and software used.
