WJE 3/1/101Mobile Studio Desktop: Setup and Calibration1 I have not been successful on the Mac with Fusion or VirtualBox. Paral-lels is slow.PurposeMobile Studio Desktop provides the equivalent of a number of bench-top electrical instruments in the form of software on a personal computer. The purpose of this Introduction is to tell you a little about MSD, walk you through setting it up on your laptop, and have you try a couple of its functions.A Brief HistoryMobile Studio Desktop grew out of an idea of Professor Don Millard, an idea that good electrical laboratory pedagogy could be accomplished by using computer representations of typical laboratory instruments plus computer interface boards to connect to actual electrical devices and circuits.Professor Millard and his graduate students began to devel-op this idea at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As the proj-ect expanded, he obtained financial support from the Na-tional Science Foundation and involved four other schools: Howard, Morgan State, Rose-Hulman, and SUNY Albany.The concept is simple: Use a computer as the instrument, provide an interface board to connect electrical devices to the computer through the USB port, and manipulate the vir-tual instruments just as one would use real instruments on a lab bench—but at a much lower cost. Figure 1 shows a complete set-up with a small circuit attached to it.EquipmentWe’ll use Mobile Studio Desktop in a number of the labs in this course. Here’s what that takes: • An Intel-based computer, either desktop or laptop with a USB 2.0 port, running Windows 2000, XP (except x64), Vista, or Windows 7. This includes Intel-based Macs running Windows either under OS X and Parallels or stand-alone via Boot Camp.1 • The current version of Mobile Studio Desktop. See the next section for how to get this. • The current Mobile Studio IOBoard™ and the ap-propriate USB cable.A word of warning! The I/O board is powered by your computer’s USB port. The circuits you build will be con-nected to the board and will derive power from it. Don’t short-circuit any power connections from the i/o boarD! It is possible to destroy the board and, under the right (wrong?) conditions, your USB port.Installing Mobile Studio DesktopBefore downloading Mobile Studio Desktop, you must Dis-connect any i/o boarD from your usb port. Don’t connect the board until you have MSD running on your computer.You must be in administrator mode. Then go to http://www.mobilestudioproject.com and click on the “Soft-ware Download” button.After downloading, go through the license and installer screens. If you get a security warning, allow installation to continue. If you are asked to allow installation of .net or National Instrument software, allow them—they are needed for MSD to run.Now stop here until you have an IOBoard to connect.2The initial calibration sets the Gain and the Offset of AWG1 and then repeats the procedure for AWG2: 1. Close any instruments that are on your screen. 2. Launch Analog I/O. 3. Connect your digital multimeter to the AWG1 ter-minal and its ground. See Fig. 2. 4. Set Analog I/O’s Analog Out Ch1 to 3.000 V. 5. Select Device→Analog Calibration. 6. In “calibration settings,” select “channel 1.” (It probably is already.) 7. On the “AWG output” line, adjust “Gain” to get the Dmm to read 3.000. 8. In Analog I/O, change Analog Out Ch1 to –3.000 V. 9. Note the Dmm’s reading. Calculate the mean be-tween this number and –3.000. For example, if the reading is –3.227, the mean value is –3.114 V. 10. On the “AWG Output” line, adjust “Offset (SE)” to get the Dmm to read the value just calculated. 11. On the “AWG output” line, adjust “Gain” to get the Dmm to read –3.000 V. 12. Change Analog Out Ch1 to +3.000 V. 13. Check the Dmm, which should read 3.000 V. If it doesn’t, split the difference and return to Step 7. 14. Repeat Steps 3 through 13 for AWG2 with the fol-lowing differences: a. Connect the Dmm to AWG2 and its ground. b. Set Analog I/O’s Analog Out Ch2 as directed. c. Make all calibration adjustments on “channel 2.” This completes manual calibration. Now we’ll have Mobile Studio automatically calibrate the inputs A1+/– and A2 +/–. 1. Close Analog I/O. 2. Connect AWG1 to A1+ and AWG1’s ground to A1–. (See Fig. 2.) 3. Connect AWG2 to A2+ and AWG2’s ground to A2–. 4. Near the bottom of the Analog Calibration screen,click the “auto-calibrate A1” button. Cali-bration could take as long as a minute. 5. Similarly, click the “auto-calibrate A2” button.That finishes calibrating everything. Now make it available Launch and Connect the I/O BoardOnce installation is finished, and you are still in adminis-trator mode, launch Mobile Studio Desktop. Then con-nect your I/O board. Did you get a notice of a need for drivers? Do Add New Hardware, choosing “No” on the first screen and then accepting all defaults. Did you get a re-quest to update the board’s firmware? Go to the Device menu and follow instructions.Did you get a warning that this board is not “calibrated?” This is really saying that your computer doesn’t know the settings for reading data precisely from this particular board. No calibration message? Skip to Now Let Us Play!CalibrationIf your board isn’t calibrated, do it now. But there may be a file already because someone else has already put one on line: 1. Go to http://ece-1.rose-hulman.edu 2. Then ECE Downloads→Mobile Studio 3. Look for your board (R2nnn.ioc). 4. Is it there? If so, download it to your desktop. If not, skip to Manual Calibration. 5. In Mobile Studio, Device→Analog Calibration, click “load from file,” locate the newly-download-ed file, and load it. 6. Your computer now knows about (and will remem-ber) this particular board. Discard the .ioc file and skip to Now Let Us Play!Manual CalibrationIf you didn’t find a calibration file, your board needs calibra-tion. It’s not hard to do but it requires close attention to detail. The only instrument you’ll need is your digital multimeter.Please calibrate carefully! Your file will be available to other MSD users.Figure 2 is the arrangement of the connections on the IOBoard. Calibration