Tektronix announces first wireless lab management solution for education

BEAVERTON, USA: Tektronix Inc. announced the industry's first wireless lab instrument management solution for quickly setting up and efficiently managing basic electronics engineering laboratories at colleges and universities.

The new TekSmartLab TSL3000A solution supports up to 120 instruments (30 test benches) on a single platform.

At many learning institutions, implementing productive and fully integrated instrument networks in classrooms can be a daunting task. For instance, using LAN cables to set up a network is costly, time consuming and limits flexibility. Moreover, many instruments lack LAN ports.

By converting instruments' USB ports into a wireless interface using a Wi-Fi-USB converter, TekSmartLab eliminates cabling hassles while giving professors the software tools they need to efficiently manage large, busy classrooms.

Running on a lab server, TekSmartLab sets up quickly without any LAN cables or special instrument configuration. From a central dashboard, professors can load instrument configurations associated with different course requirements and then distribute them to up to 120 instruments with a single mouse click.

Professors can easily check the instrument status and measurement contents to help with a specific test bench remotely and to save a student's measurement results into a report.

TekSmartLab also improves overall lab management. In conventional teaching labs, asset managers must manually check and record information such as instrument model numbers, serial numbers, and location. Detailed information such as the length of usage can only be estimated by experience or by keeping usage logs. In contrast, TekSmartLab automatically records and displays asset information and tracks usage time.