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Measuring impedance using an open-source instrumentation platform

Article in International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education · February 2018

DOI: 10.1177/0020720918761764

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Original Article

International Journal of Electrical Engineering

Education
Measuring impedance 0(0) 1–18
! The Author(s) 2018
using an open-source Reprints and permissions:
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instrumentation DOI: 10.1177/0020720918761764
journals.sagepub.com/home/ije

platform

Urban Burnik , Dejan Kri

zaj,
Zumret Topcagi
c and Marko Me
za

Abstract
The article presents development and design of a precision LCR meter based on an
affordable open-source instrumentation platform. The design of the instrument has
been performed by an interdisciplinary group of students. A project-based approach
has been used in order to make a practical use of engineering knowledge within the
group of participants. The results cover all the necessary project results achieved by
the participants from the state-of-the art analysis in the domain of LCR meters to
dissemination of project results. These may serve as a guide for similar project
specifications. Alternatively, the presented results may be used in preparing student
assignments in electrical impedance measurements based on affordable hardware.

Keywords
LCR, impedance, measurement, education, industrial project

Introduction
Electrical impedance is an important parameter used to characterize the behavior
of a two-terminal (one-port) electrical circuit. It demonstrates to what extent the
circuit opposes the alternating current flow. Impedance is a complex quantity

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Corresponding author:
Urban Burnik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, LUCAMI, Trzaska 25, Ljubljana 1000,
Slovenia.
Email: [email protected]
2 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

defined as a ratio of voltage to current phasors resulting in two parameters, the

impedance modulus (absolute value of impedance) determined as a ratio of voltage
to current amplitudes and a phase, determined as a difference between the phases
of the voltage and current signals. As a fundamental quantity expressing linear
relation between current and voltage it is often named as Ohms law for AC signals.
It should, however, be noted that Ohms law in its original form is used only to
relate voltage and current at DC biasing.
As being a fundamental quantity in circuits theory it is presented to the students
of electrical engineering already in the introductory courses. The students should
be familiarized with basic elements of electrical circuits such as resistors, capaci-
tors, and inductances and their role in the circuits. They should also be aware of
their nonidealities, in particular, in their frequency dependence that is most clearly
explained through the concept of impedance.
Using a commonly available digital multimeter, a student can easily estimate the
principal electrical parameter of a given component such as resistance, capacitance, or
in some cases inductance, but may remain unaware of its behavior over a wider
frequency range. For such a purpose, a dedicated professional-grade laboratory equip-
ment, typically an LCR meter (also called impedance meter) is commonly used. Such
instrument is not widely available for hands-on experiments within larger student
groups or in DIY home laboratories. Recently, however, several programmable
data acquisition and processing kits are becoming available to the students, makers,
and engineering professionals. Throughout the paper, we demonstrate how a readily
available and affordable open-source instrumentation platform, capable of precision
multichannel signal generation and data acquisition may be used on a student labo-
ratory workbench as a good alternative to dedicated professional instruments.
Moreover, we will demonstrate how we challenged an interdisciplinary group of
students to design and implement their own design of an LCR meter.
The presented design has been supported through an application to a national
tender supporting partnership between university (students) and the industry.
Throughout the presented project, students utilized a commercially available instru-
ment development platform produced by the industrial partner and developed the
necessary hardware and software extensions, designing an instrument which can
accurately measure impedance properties of a physical electrical element. The proj-
ect results were made available as an open-source extension to the platform user
community and have served as a foundation for a further commercial LCR meter
platform extension. The presented method can be easily deployed as a laboratory
experiment utilizing various core programmable instrumentation platforms. The
results may also serve as a guide for supervisors who consider to include LCR
meter or similar instrument student design project in their curriculum.

Materials and methods

The students obtain a solid theoretical knowledge on resistance, capacitance, and
inductance and their behavior in electric circuits during fundamental courses in
Burnik et al. 3

electrical engineering. Starting to design electrical circuits and devices, young engi-
neers often realize that a physical electrical component may not match the expect-
ations based on its ideal model. We used a project-based learning approach,1,2 to
improve the understanding of the physical components’ behavior. We decided to
propose a project activity that would give the participating students a first-hand
experience with the caveats of impedance measurements.

Project-based learning tender

The proposed idea has been evaluated and supported by a tender application to a
national program called “Creative path to practical knowledge” funded by the
Slovene human resource and management fund.3 The program targets students
who wish to participate in small research projects in addition to their studies. It
was established to stimulate students’ activities on practical engineering assign-
ments in a partnership with the industry and to help in transitioning from the
school environment into the working one. After its initial success in 2013, the
program is gaining on popularity and is currently reaching the end of its third
call. Under first two calls, it included more than 3400 students and 500
organizations.

Goals and activities

The project goal was to design an instrument that measures impedance of physical
electrical components. The instrument should exploit capabilities of signal gener-
ation, capturing and processing, as offered by a commercially available instrumen-
tation and control platform. Resourcing only to harmonic signal generators and
voltage measurements in time, we were expecting of the students to get a deep
insight in how complex measurements of impedance should be performed, what
are the real characteristics of physical electrical elements and what are the caveats
of precise measurements of electrical values.
We founded the project on the following activities that should take place
throughout the project duration.

• Evaluation of commercially available LCR meters.

• Theoretical overview of LCR measurement methods.
• Performance evaluation of a given open-source instrumentation platform.
• Development framework configuration and setup.
• Design and implementation of an LCR meter.
• Validation and performance evaluation of results against a reference impedance
instrument.
• Dissemination of project results.

We have defined the scope of the project in the initial project proposal. Based
upon the desired outcomes, the students were allowed to plan the project activities
4 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

autonomously. Among the participants, a senior student member volunteered as a

project leader who managed the assignments for project rollout and execution and
supervised the project activities. At the end of the project, the objectives of the
project have been verified and the results disseminated in selected public events.
We have prepared a final project report containing main project results and project
evaluation by participating teaching and industrial personnel as required by the
tender. In addition, a self-assessment has been performed among the student
participants to identify the overall level of satisfaction and perceived benefits of
project participation.

Results
LCR measurement instruments
The project participants have analyzed typical commercially available LCR meters
for their measurement method, technical characteristics, and price–performance
ratio. The analysis should help to determine a list of goals the designed instrument
should achieve. They have identified a variety of commercial LCR meters in the
following main categories:
Handheld digital multimeters can measure resistance and capacitance, some even
inductance of a passive electrical component. The measurement is usually based on
time constant method. The meters in this class are affordable and have a typical
accuracy of
1%. These instruments measure only a dominant electrical value and
cannot provide complex measurement results. These instruments are affordable
and their price starts at 15 USD.
Handheld LCR meters are portable, lightweight, and operate on batteries. Most
models can operate at multiple test frequencies and provide an interface to an
external PC, usually via USB port. They are intended for general use and are
practical for field maintenance and repair applications. These meters utilize AC
measurement methods and can typically provide resistive and reactive readouts.
The expected accuracy of measurement is within 0.2–0.1%. The price range is
moderate, within 200–1,000 USD.
Benchtop LCR meters, in general, offer more features compared to handheld instru-
ments which include programmable frequencies, computer control and data collection
for automated applications, DC bias voltage, DC bias current, and sweep capabilities.
They offer a better measurement accuracy of up to 0.01%. They are used for
laboratory tasks like AC calibration of inductance, capacitance and resistance
standards, measurements of dielectric constant, and testing of components and sensors
in production. The price range is high, in range from 2000 to 20,000 USD.

LCR measurement methods

Several measurement methods can be used to measure electrical properties of pas-
sive electrical components such as resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Commonly,
Burnik et al. 5

we associate an electrical component with its principal electrical parameter that

can be easily estimated using a digital multimeter or even an oscilloscope. For a
precise analysis of parasitic values we may use a dedicated impedance (LCR) meter
or similar precision instrument based on complex impedance analysis over a wide
frequency range. We discuss some typical LCR measurement principles below.
The methods discussed are shown in Figure 1, where the measured component is
referenced as “device under test” (DUT).

Time constant measurement method. A simple and efficient reactance measurement

method utilizes a time constant of a resistive and reactive electrical component
connected in series. The measurement circuits are represented in Figure 1, left.
When a capacitor is connected to a constant voltage source Vmax, the capacitor
voltage increases exponentially as VC ðtÞ ¼ Vmax ð1  es Þ; s ¼ RC. It is easy to see
t

that VC ðTÞ ¼ Vmax ð1  e1 Þ  63%Vmax , so the capacitance can be directly calcu-
lated from measured s as C ¼ s=R.
Adequately, if voltage source is connected to an inductor, the voltage on an
inductor decreases as VL ðtÞ ¼ Vmax ðes Þ; s ¼ L=R and inductance is obtained from
t

measured s of an LR circuit VL ðTÞ ¼ Vmax ðe1 Þ  37%Vmax and equals to C ¼ Rs.

The time constant measurement method is commonly used in digital
multimeters to measure capacitance.4 It has low accuracy and is not suitable for
extreme capacitance values and cannot determine a complete readout of parasitic
values. The method can also be utilized using a signal generator and an oscilloscope.

Bridge network method. Most accurate impedance measurement methods utilize an

alternating current bridge network in order to measure both the resistive and
reactive component of the DUT. A bridge typically consists of four arms, a
source of excitation and a balance detector,5 as shown in Figure 1, center.
In “balance,” there is no potential difference over a detector, and the value of
the unknown impedance Zx is obtained using the expression

VR VZ

R
DUT

D
D

R
DUT

L
Virtual bridge

Figure 1. Typical circuits for impedance measurements. DUT: device under test.
6 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

Z1
Zx ¼ Z3
Z2
With a bridge circuit we can measure impedance using relatively simple indica-
tor instruments. No complex measurement instruments are required, which was of
a particular importance in time of analog instruments. The method is, however,
cumbersome as not only modulus but also the phase of the impedances should be
“balanced” in order to get zero reading of the detector (D).

Complex current and voltage measurement method. By definition, the impedance of a

DUT may be calculated directly from measurements of current IZ and voltage VZ as
shown in Figure 1, right. Digital instruments may provide fast and accurate acqui-
sition of samples in time domain enabling determination of amplitude,
frequency, and phase shift of an alternate voltage or current with ease. Normally,
we would use a reference resistor to measure the current IZ ¼ VR =RS and use the
current signal amplitude to calculate the absolute value of the impedance through a
definition of impedance as Zx ¼ VZ =IZ ¼ RS VZ =VR where VZ is the amplitude of
the DUT voltage signal. Preferably, the reference resistor should not differ much
from the impedance of the DUT to produce most accurate results. For direct read-
out of amplitude and phase difference between the voltage and current signal we
would require an accurate quantizer and a high oversampling rate. Accuracy and
noise resiliency can be improved using integrative (averaging) DSP algorithms.
Using these techniques, the amplitudes and phases of the voltage and current signals
can be obtained by comparing them with a reference sine signal over the entire
period under observation. We could interpret the synthesized reference sine signal
as voltage at a bottom-arm node of a virtual bridge as shown in Figure 1, right.
Complex current and voltage measurement method is a preferred impedance
measurement method in digital LCR meters where digital signal processors
provide accurate measurement of AC voltage signals and integrative methods
can be used to improve the noise resiliency. This method has also been used in
the presented project and is in more detail explained in the following chapters.

Open-source instrument hardware platform

As an instrumentation platform we have selected a ready-made, general-purpose
open-source DSP system. The system consists of a credit card sized system board,
featuring an ARM Cortex microprocessor combined with a field programmable
gate array (FPGA) on a single chip and a precision digital-to-analog and
analog-to-digital interface. The design of the board is compact and is, unlike
most development kits, suitable for final deployment of the developed solution.
These features make the implemented device not only ideal in education but also
attractive as a signal processing module in certain commercial solutions. It has
been announced as an affordable alternative to a series of professional laboratory
instruments, especially for students and enthusiasts.6 A wide range of software-
Burnik et al. 7

driven instruments are available by the provider, and custom solutions can be
made by the user as the entire system software is open and well documented.
The system offers a pair of fast analog inputs and fast analog outputs, operating at
125 millions of samples per second (MS/s) with a precision of 14 bits. The inputs are
DC coupled, with bandwidth of 50 MHz (3 dB). Additionally, it provides 16 general
purpose input/output, four low-speed analog signal inputs, and four low-speed analog
signal outputs. Data access, configuration, and control of the system is enabled over a
wired Gigabit Ethernet connection, or, alternatively, using a Wi-Fi module in the
form of USB dongle. The Zynq, 7010 system-on-chip is powered by a Xilinx’s build of
Linux operating system. The SoC utilizes a dual-core Cortex A9 processor combined
with a 28K logic cell FPGA for heavy real-time signal processing.7 A web interface is
commonly used as a user interface as there is no native display provided. The system
architecture is presented in Figure 2 with technical specifications listed at the official
RedPitaya documentation website.8
The deployed hardware platform boots from an SD card into a Linux-based Red
Pitaya operating system running on an ARM Cortex processing core. The minimum
SD card size is 4 GB. Red Pitaya is a networked device and the initial configuration
should normally be provided through DHCP in a local network. An IP discovery
service assists the user through first-time configuration operations.
Upon booting, the device is operated through a web browser using a STEMLab
interface. This is an environment designed by the manufacturer of a device, from which
the user can start one of the preinstalled instruments, initiate Standard Commands for
Programmable Instrumentation (SCPI) server providing Matlab/Scilab/Python/
LabView data connectivity or load additional instruments. Apart from a set of officially
supported measurement solutions, a user can download applications that were devel-
oped by the Red Pitaya community or their own software solutions. The source code of
the core system and of the existing instruments is available under GPLv2, representing a
solid WebIF-based instrument opened for full customization. Basic use of provided
instruments requires little technical knowledge from end product user. For mobile use, a
Wi-Fi access is possible, even with stand-alone operation in AP mode. Apart from web
interface, a console terminal is provided locally or via a secure shell socket connection
for advanced manual configuration including application installation.
The normal operation of Red Pitaya instrument relies on three core elements: a
web-based graphical input/output interface, a controller running as a native Linux
application, and an FPGA for signal generation and acquisition, as shown in
Figure 3. Figure 4 demonstrates an optional command line application mode
without the web interface.

Development framework
With a project explicitly encouraging teamwork and collaborative development, a
suitable framework for online exchange of project documentation as well as a set
of programming tools was required.
8 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

2 × Analog In, 1 MOhm 2 × Analog Out

LTC2145 DAC1401
Xylinx
2×14bit ADC 2×14bit DAC
Zynq 7010
125Ms/s 125Ms/s
SoC
Cortex
Ethernet ARM9
ETH-PHY
Core 1
PHY11G 800 MHz 8 × LED

Cortex 16 pin GPIO

USB ARM9
USB3320C Core 2 800 SPI
MHz
I2C

4 × slow ADC
Arx 7 FPGA
SDRAM 28k Logic Cells
17600 LUT 4 × slow DAC
35200 FF
240kB RAM RS232
80 DSP Slices
TXS02612
SD 2 × high speed IO
SDIO

Micro USB
5V 2A
PSU

Figure 2. Red Pitaya architecture.

We decided to host the project-related documentation on a simple yet efficient

internal Wiki page. Wiki servers are known for ease of management and univer-
sality for hosting project development and deployment documentation. In our
case, the same infrastructure has been used to host participant profiles, a simple
project workflow, administrative project document archive, hardware and software
documentation, as well as meeting reports.
The software development environment was based on a GitHub repository.
GitHub is a web-based, hosted Git repository service supporting distributed
revision control and source code management. Its use has been encouraged by
the Red Pitaya platform manufacturer, as it fits well for open-source-based project
design and as it is available for free. GitHub provides fundamental tools for
collaborative software development, which is beneficial in any team project
design and specifically for open-source code development.
Burnik et al. 9

WEB interface
(HTML+JavaScript)
Source: <app_name>/web/
TCP/IP Client
Server
WEB
NGINX
browser
Controller (C)
Binary: <app_name>/controller.so
Source: <app_name>/web/

FPGA
(HDL)
Image: <app_name>/fpga.bit

Physical interfaces
ADC, DAC, GPIO

Figure 3. WEB application structure.

Controller (C)
Binary: /opt/bin/tool_name
Source: /src/uls/<app_name>

FPGA
(pre-built)
generate/acquire

Physical interfaces
ADC, DAC, GPIO

Figure 4. Command-line application structure.

Design and implementation of LCR meter

The student project participants have evaluated several LCR measurement meth-
ods for accuracy and completeness. Based on the results, they proposed a solution
utilizing the selected instrumentation platform. We briefly describe the applied
solution within this section.
The selected instrumentation platform offered the participants fully featured
digital signal processing capabilities and an accurate analog and digital interface.
10 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

Therefore, they selected a method based on complex current and voltage

measurements.
A schematic measurement circuit is presented in Figure 5. A voltage output
provided directly by the STEMLab platform (OUT0) has been utilized as an AC
source and connected to a measured element (DUT) marked as Zx and a reference
resistor RS connected in series. The applied voltage signal was measured by an
input (INO) while the second input (IN1) was used to measure voltage on the
reference resistor. Voltage over the measured element VZ is thus obtained from
the difference of voltages VZ ðtÞ ¼ VIN0  VIN1 while the current through the DUT
was determined from IZ ðtÞ ¼ VRIN1S
.
A digital lock-in method has been used to determine the in-phase and
quadrature components of voltage and current signals. For voltage over DUT
we obtain

Z tþNT0
VZI ¼ hVZ ðtÞ; sinð2pfo tÞi ¼ VZ ðtÞsinð2pf0 tÞdt (1)
t

Z tþNT0
VZQ ¼ hVZ ðtÞ; cosð2pfo tÞi ¼ VZ ðtÞcosð2pf0 tÞdt (2)
t

1
T0 ¼ (3)
f0

where f0 is the excitation and reference signal frequency and N is the number of
periods sampled. In a same way the in-phase IZI and quadrature IZQ
current components are obtained. If we assume the voltage and current over

OUT0

IN0
Zx

Instrumentation IN1
platform
Rs

GND

Figure 5. Measurement circuit.

Burnik et al. 11

DUT are VZ ðtÞ ¼ jVZ jsinð2pfo t þ uVZ Þ and IZ ðtÞ ¼ jIZ jsinð2pfo t þ uIZ Þ then the
voltage and current amplitudes and phases are obtained from
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi VZQ
jVZ j ¼ 2 V2ZI þ V2ZQ uVZ ¼ arctan (4)
VZI
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi IZQ
jIZ j ¼ 2 I2ZI þ I2ZQ uIZ ¼ arctan (5)
IZI

and the impedance is

jVZ j jðuV uIz Þ

Z ¼ Zeju ¼ e Z (6)
jIZ j

Measurements based on the proposed inner product demonstrate a high resis-

tance to noise as, by definition, any signals orthogonal to excitation frequency does
not contribute to the measurement.
The measurement method as we implemented provides the values of a complex
impedance based on measured pair of amplitudes and a phase difference at a given
frequency. The method can provide readouts at each frequency selected within the
initialization of the measurement procedure.
For the initial algorithm design, we have relied on the SCPI platform
interface which allowed us to directly operate the system from a high-level
numerical computing environment Matlab. For those interested in similar
laboratory setups, other environments like Python and LabView are also sup-
ported. A complete set of commands is available in the products’ reference guide.8
After the measurement algorithm has been established and verified, we have
implemented the one natively, resulting in a stand-alone LCR instrument utilizing
the applied instrumentation platform. This step required an extended set of knowl-
edge and skills, justifying the size and multidisciplinary nature of the team
involved. There the necessary calculations were done in C language, with a dedi-
cated user interface written in HTML and accessible via a generic browser. We
have based the interface on the principles and technology of responsive web design,
which allows the end users to utilize desktop web access as well as mobile browsers
to perform and manage the measurements.

Validation and performance of the LCR meter

The physical setup of the experiment is shown in Figure 6. The STEMLab device is
connected to a personal computer via Wi-Fi (not shown in the figure). A Matlab
program using SCPI commands is used to run the experiments and plot the results
presented in Figures 7 to 11.
12 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

Figure 6. Photo of the actual measurement setup with a STEMLab connected to a protoboard
containing the measured impedance (DUT) as well as a reference resistor. The black probe
provides the output excitation signal while the two copper-colored probes are the input signals
IN0 and IN1 used to measure the excitation voltage and the voltage over the reference resistor,
respectively, as also sketched in Figure 5.

The first validation was done using a resistor of R ¼ 1785 X as a DUT and a
reference resistor of 1 kX. The resulting current and voltage waveforms are pre-
sented in Figure 7 utilizing an excitation frequency of 10 kHz. As expected, the
current and voltage waveforms are in phase which is well seen from the top graph
showing development of current and voltage with time (samples) as well as from
the bottom graph, presenting the current/voltage signals in an X/Y plane. The
latter should look as a line for a resistor and as an ellipse for impedances possess-
ing a nonzero phase value.
The second example utilizes a DUT consisting of a parallel connection of a
capacitor and a coil as presented in Figure 8. The values of the capacitor and coil
were determined with a professional LCR meter giving a capacitance of C = 96 nF
and a resistance and inductance of R ¼ 7:88 X and L = 6.256 mH, respectively,
Burnik et al. 13

Figure 7. Voltage and current waveforms over a resistor of R ¼ 1785 X.

DUT

C L

Figure 8. Real model of parallel connection of a capacitor and a coil, the coil is modeled as a
connection of an ideal resistor and inductor in series. DUT: device under test.

for a coil by assuming it can be modeled as a series connection of an ideal resistor

and inductor. The mathematical model of DUT impedance is thus given using an
expression

1
Z ¼ Z C kZ L ¼ kðRs þ jxLs Þ (7)
jxC

where symbol k stands for a parallel connection of two impedances.

14 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

Figure 9. Matlab measurements: complex voltage/current readouts at a single frequency of a

LjjC component.

Figure 10. Measured impedance modulus and phase of a parallel connection of a capacitor and a
coil as a function of frequency.
Burnik et al. 15

Figure 11. Impedance modulus obtained by the developed method (green), benchtop instru-
ment (blue), and theoretically calculated values (red).

The results acquired using STEMLab are shown in Figure 9 for an excitation
frequency of 6600 Hz. The top as well as the bottom graph shows the expected
phase shift of the voltage and current signals of about 60 .
Furthermore, a frequency sweep from a frequency of 1–10 kHz in 250 linear
steps was performed. With this approach it is possible to show the resonant behav-
ior of the circuit at a frequency of around 6500 Hz as shown in Figure 10. The top
graph presents an impedance modulus (absolute value) while the bottom graph
presents its phase response, both as a function of frequency. The complete mea-
surement using STEMLab and Matlab took place for 950 s.
Once the algorithm for complex impedance measurement has been tested, a
native measurement program in C language has been created. The measurement
in the same frequency range took 38 s, which demonstrated a significantly more
efficient realization.
Characteristics of the developed LCR meter were also compared to the meas-
urements on a precision benchtop LCR meter. The frequency characteristics of
amplitude and phase characteristics using the developed measurement method
(own) and a benchtop meter are shown in Figures 11 and 12 together with theo-
retical values obtained through equation (7).
From the readouts one can identify some further calibration was required to
improve the precision of the method.
16 International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 0(0)

Figure 12. Phase impedance characteristics of own method (green), benchtop instrument
(blue), and theoretically calculated values (red).

Dissemination of the results

First public presentation of the project results was made as a poster presenta-
tion at the International Electrotechnical and Computer Science Conference.9
The LCR meter developed within our project was also presented in a special
session at the Sixth European Conference of the International Federation
for Medical and Biological Engineering in Dubrovnik. Selected results
have been presented at a “MakerFaire” workshop in Rome; the presentation
made by all student participants has been supported by the industrial partner
and the company RS Components. The project has been selected as an exem-
plary project from University of Ljubljana within the first public tender
“Creative path to practical knowledge” and was as an exemplary success
story presented at the third national conference on career development in
Lasko. The company later developed a dedicated electronics add-on for
STEMLab that improves the accuracy of the measurements by automatically
selecting the optimal precision reference resistor depending on the value of the
measured impedance.
Burnik et al. 17

Conclusion and discussion

Throughout the six-month project duration the participating students managed to
perform all the necessary steps toward an autonomous development of an LCR
measurement instrument. The students have demonstrated a high level of commit-
ment as, despite technical challenges, they have managed to reach a complete set of
objectives defined by the initial project assignment. In partnership with the man-
ufacturer of the instrumentation platform they have severely improved their
domain specific and soft skills and managed to deploy their theoretical knowledge
obtained during studies to a practical engineering assignment.
This study can be used as an example in creating similar student projects to be
deployed in a team or as a capstone or a final project. Alternatively, the study
provides enough materials and references for the educators to serve as a guide for
creating laboratory assignments in the area of measurement algorithm design,
native algorithm implementation, and/or even FPGA programming using the
described or similar instrumentation platforms.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: This project was partially financed by the European
Union from the European Social Fund. The project is held within the Operational
Programme for Human Resources Development 2007–2013, development priorities
“Business and adaptability encouragement and preferential specializations,” scholarship
scheme under the approved program “Creative path to practical knowledge”.

ORCID iD
Urban Burnik http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8652-4977

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