ELEC1111 Remote Labs

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Remote Lab Familiarisation
Learning Objectives
The objective of this document is to provide a stress-free environment for you to familiarise yourself with the
remote lab structure. Over the course of this reading exercise, the following skills are to be obtained:
• Accepting and joining private meetings in Teams.
• Remotely accessing the lab computer and working with lab equipment.
• Getting help from your lab demonstrators.
• Using the marking list form and checking your position on the waiting list when you wish to get marked.
• Receiving private calls in Microsoft Teams.
Required Tools
For the remote online laboratories, you will need:
• A laptop or computer with Microsoft Teams installed
• A stable internet connection
• A functioning webcam and microphone
Introduction
Welcome to the laboratory component of Electrical Circuit Fundamentals at UNSW. We hope that you are all
staying physically and mentally healthy and are also diligently following government guidelines relating to
the COVID-19 virus.
This term we have an excellent team of lab demonstrators who will do their best to take care of you, and to
encourage you to do your best while you are learning. It is our hope that the skills that you take away from
this course will be broadly applicable to real-world engineering problems. To this end, we encourage you to
keep up to date with the lecture material and to ask lots of questions via the channels mentioned in the
course outline.
The remote online laboratories are carried out using equipment which allows computer-controlled operation.
This means that you can control the equipment remotely without needing to be physically present in the
laboratory room. The circuits for each laboratory experiment will already be setup for you as printed circuit
boards (PCBs). The remote laboratory circuit setup uses relay switches, which are electronically operated
(in this case remote operated) ON/OFF switches. You will need to correctly configure circuits by working out
which relay switches to open or close.
For further details about remote lab equipment and how labs run, carefully read the subsection “Laboratory
Equipment” and all subsections in the Appendix of the remote (online) lab manual.
Pre-lab Preparation
1. If you have not done so already, download the Microsoft Teams App (Desktop version).
2. Watch all previous lecture recordings and read the relevant lab experiment section in the lab manual
before your lab class so you have the knowledge to partake.
3. Go to Moodle and click on “Laboratory Manual, Guidance Videos and OH&S” and watch the relevant
videos (which are also accessible via links in the lab manual). You can also find the videos in the
Laboratories channel on Teams.
4. Contact your lab partner and discuss an arrangement between yourselves for sharing the workstation.
This will help you develop a good working relationship with your lab partner for remote collaboration.
You might also like to try privately calling your lab partner on Microsoft Teams, just to get used to the
platform. To do this, you can search up their name on the bar at the top of the program to start a
conversation.
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Remote Lab Operation Guide
Please carefully read the instructions and complete the following tasks in your lab session.

Joining the lab and requesting control
1. Accept and join your private meeting for each lab1.
a. Accept the meeting from your University email (use your own computer).
Remote access through Screen Sharing is only available via Teams app on a PC or Laptops
(Mobile and browser Teams app cannot get remote access)
b. This meeting is now accessible in your Calendar. You can find your Calendar in the “Calendar” tab
on the left-hand pane of the Microsoft Teams app, as shown in Figure 1. Please access this on
your home computer.


Figure 1: Accessing the Calendar from the left-hand pane of Microsoft Teams.
c. To join the meeting, click on the Meeting block and then, in the resulting window, click “Join”. Make
sure that you are accessing the meeting on the correct day (as Microsoft Teams will allow you to
join meetings in both the future and the past).

1 A Microsoft Teams meeting which repeats at the same time every week will be set up for each group of students in
each lab.
Please click on the purple block,
(This is just an example).
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Figure 2: Joining the meeting from the Calendar invitations.
2. Please wait for your lab demonstrator to share the screen of the lab computer.
a. When screen sharing starts, you will notice the following toolbar appear (shown in Figure 3). Note
that this toolbar will only appear if Microsoft Teams is in focus and if someone in the meeting is
sharing their screen.
b. You might want to go full-screen, so that it feels like you are at the lab computer. To do this, click
on the three dots to bring up the settings as shown in Figure 3. There are different ways to exit
full-screen depending on your operating system. On a Windows machine, you can press “Alt-Tab”.
Mac computers may not have this issue.


Figure 3: Sharing toolbar in Microsoft Teams.
3. Get remote access to the lab computer by clicking on the “Request control” button, shown in Figure 3.
When you have done this, you will notice the toolbar shown in Figure 4 appearing at the top of the
screen.
a. A lab demonstrator in the lab will then grant you control of the lab computer by clicking on “Allow”.
b. Now, you will be able to directly use the lab computer remotely as long as the Microsoft Teams
window is in focus. You can click on the shared screen and type as normal.
c. Lab demonstrators are able to manually grant one of you control from the lab computer directly if
you forget to request remote control.


Figure 4: Control request panel (top middle of the shared screen).
Please be patient as the remote access usually has some latency or delay when reacting to your
mouse movement or clicking on the shared screen.
4. Swap control between you and your partner.
a. Once you have access, you should try to request control from your lab partner, as shown in Figure
3. This time, the partner who has control should click “Allow” in the toolbar that appears at the top
of the window in the lab computer screen (shown in Figure 4).
Click this to request control. Click here for the settings.
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b. Do NOT click “Stop presenting” at any time during your lab, as you will lose access to the lab
computer. If that happens, let your lab demonstrators know using the “Help Form” from your
laboratory channel. (“Help Form” instructions is given in the following section).

5. Bring up and adjust the live-video feed to your liking.
a. In this course, there is a live-video feed showing the PCB device that you will be working with in the
lab. This live video feed is accessible through the Windows 10 default “Camera” app.

File sharing with your lab demos
For any file transfer to your lab demonstrators, please drag & drop (or attach) your files in the chat box
(Figure 5) of your lab session.



Figure 5: Transferring files to the chat box
The files that you usually need to share with your demos are:
- Pre-Labs (Section A of each experiment) completed before the lab starts
- Measured values during the lab
- Your reasoning for questions that require further explanations
- Screenshots captured during your lab procedures

! P re-labs for each lab need to be completed before your lab sessions. Please submit your completed
pre-lab work at the beginning of your lab session. You can upload the files through the meeting chat.

Request for help during labs
To support students doing remote labs and to make sure every student has been taken care of in a timely
manner, the “Help Form” and “Help Queue” have been implemented in your Teams laboratory channel. The
purpose of Help form is to provide a platform for students to request help from demonstrators at any point
during their lab procedure. Help form can be used to request technical support (if you have hardware issues
and you need help from demos in the lab). You can also request help from remote demos if you have any
questions or doubts about your lab procedures. At different stages during the lab (called checkpoints), you
can request to be marked up to the part you have already completed.


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Steps to request for help are shown below:

1. Select “Help Form” tab from your laboratory channel.

2. You will be directed to the page below:

Figure 6: Help Form from Laboratory Channel.
3. In the first part, you need to select your bench number. Please note that your group number is the
same as your bench number. For example, if you have enrolled to Monday 9-12 lab session, the title
of your calendar invitation is going to be “elec1111-mon 9–C3”. C3 means that you are using bench
number C3 or computer 3 in the lab.
4. Once you have selected your bench number from the drop-down menu, you can now select the type
of your request
5. You can now submit your request.
6. To check the status of your request, you can now click on the “Help Queue” tab from laboratory
channel.

7. You will be redirected to a live excel sheet which indicates the position of your request in the queue
(Figure 7)
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Figure 7: Help queue on laboratory channel
8. Please be patient while all demonstrators are engaged with other students. The next available lab
demonstrator will attend your request. The status of your request will then be changed to “helping”
or “marking” depending on the type of help request.
9. While waiting for support, you can further discuss the problem or the rest of lab procedures with
your group members.

! Important Note: Please do not submit duplicate requests of same type in the help form. However, you
can submit different request types at once. For example, if you have both a question and need to be marked
as well, you can submit two different requests. Also, as you work in groups for this course’s labs, only one
student within the group needs to submit the requests at any time.

Getting Marked
To get assessed, please fill in the relevant section of the Help Form on Microsoft Forms. You can find both
the marking form (where you enter your name) and the Queue list (where you can see your place in the
queue) in tabs in your laboratory channel.



! Each lab will have multiple of these checkpoints. Marking for each checkpoint is done on a non-
numerical scale using a rubric. These marks will be mapped to a numerical mark by the course
coordinator.
In order to get marks in the upper echelons of this scheme, you must not only be able to successfully do
the lab, but also put in significant effort into trying to understand why you are observing what you are
observing. As your knowledge grows, you will be expected to demonstrate that you can extend your
increasing knowledge of circuit theory to lab experiments and real measurements. Your lab
demonstrators are here to make this journey feel less intimidating, so please feel free to tag us to let us
know when you need help.



--- End of Lab Familiarisation ---
Check Point 1: Please ask a lab demonstrator to check your work before proceeding.