CHARUSAT initiated first ever self-powered virtual lab for practical knowledge and research amidst COVID-19 pandemic situation

In this Covid 19 pandemic situation all the students of schools, colleges and universities are studying from home as online education becomes the best option to continue the studies. In this situation the biggest challenge is acquiring practical knowledge.

This challenge has been accepted by the staff of U & P U Patel Department of Computer Engineering of Charotar University of Science and Technology Changa. There should be no loss of practical knowledge of students, in the same context U & P U Patel Department of Computer Engineering has initiated to develop and research the CHARUSAT Virtual Lab.

This virtual lab has been developed for the first time in the state of Gujarat. From last one month this virtual lab has been utilized by the students of university. This lab is working 24×7 and even students can access the lab at night time.

This system has been developed under the guidance of Ashok Patel, IT advisor of CHARUSAT, Dr. A. D. Patel, Principal CSPIT and Dr. Ritesh Patel Head of the Department. In the first phase with the 150 computers the lab has been set up successfully.

This system has been developed by two lab technicians Kalpesh Patel and Bhavin Dave with support of Sagar Patel and Ritesh Bhatt from U & P U. Patel Department of Computer Engineering.

CHARUSAT has set up this system by their own and 480 students of Patel Department of Computer Engineering can also study and practice on the computers of the lab from home. This study can be done on mobiles, tablets and desktops.

The aim is to ensure that students’ practical exposure does not stop when colleges are currently closed. A total of 150 computers can be used. Apart from this, the power saving of the remaining computers will also be taken care of.

The lab has been developed in two parts. First part is under CHARUSAT Virtual Lab application students have to install this application on their laptop or desktop. Students can frequently access lab computers on their home laptops. They will also be able to access from mobile / tablet devices. Students will be able to use it for 1 hour at a time so that other students can also get the benefits from that resource. This lab software will maintain student logs / data records. Students’ public IP address will be tracked so that their location can be tracked.

Under second part CHARUSAT Virtual Lab Server is a server application running on the same server on the CHARUSAT campus that will act as a bridge between lab computers and students’ laptops or desktops to help establish a connection, constantly monitoring lab computers every 40 seconds.

The lab will collect the IP addresses of current computers and place them in pools. So that lab computers can be given to students from the IP address pool. This application will keep a record of students’ public IP / start time / end time / LABIP connection.