Embedded control and virtual instrument simplifies laboratory automation

Personal computers (PCs) are playing a vital role everywhere. From physics to psychology, the use of PCs is increasing rapidly. At present the trend in laboratory as well as industrial automation, to establish ongoing research and development programmes is minimal hardware design and maximal support of software. The software availability and the intelligent embedded hardware design configuration enable easy interfacing of systems with PCs. In the field of research and development programmes PCs act as a powerful tool for measurement of data and automation of experiments through their standard interfacing techniques. Virtual instrument design concept in software provides graphical user interface and enables a simple design solution with embedded controller through its standard communication interface with PCs. This note describes automation of some simple physics experiments using PCs.