The Wadhwani Electronics Laboratory (WEL) was set up in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay with the help of an endowment from Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, batch of 1969, EE department, IIT Bombay, for the purpose of teaching and project work in electronics. The laboratory was formally inaugurated by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani on February 12, 2001.
The lab is equipped with (1) basic bench-top equipment like standard oscilloscope, DMM, power supply and signal generators, (2) specialized equipment like storage oscilloscopes, high-frequency mixed-signal oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, (3) computers for PCB design, SPICE simulations, and FPGA programming, etc.
The lab houses all the major electronics hardware activities of the EE department at IIT Bombay. Twelve major laboratory courses are conducted every year. Each year, about 600 undergraduate and about 200 post-graduate and Dual-Degree students do their courses in the laboratory. In addition to courses, the lab is home to all major electronics projects done by students in the EE Department.
Various technical events are housed every year in the Wadhwani lab, including electronics worskhops, competitions, training for electronics teachers, etc. The lab is actively involved in spreading electronics education through the “Virtual Labs” initiative sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India.
Academics:
The Wadhwani Electronics Lab caters to all of the electronics lab courses conducted by the Department of Electrical Engineering. Every academic year, about four hundered students use the lab facilities for a regular laboratory course. Apart from regular courses, the lab also supports project work related to electronics, including embedded systems, as a part of under-graduate or post-graduate projects.
As a part of the “Electronics Design lab” course, students take up challenging projects and work on them for an entire semester, from design to prototyping. Several interesting projects are completed every year as a part of academic requirement or plain tinkering.
Events:
A large number of events are organised every year in the Wadhwani Electronics Lab, with participation from IITB as well as other engineering colleges. These events include electronics workshops, Techfest competitions, training sessions for electronics education, etc. It has become a tradition for second-year students to organise electronics workshops for the fresh batch and get them started early in electronics. The workshops cover basics of robotics, android-based development, driving of a stepper motor, etc. Armed with these basic tools, interested students take it forward and build systems either as a hobby or as a part of competitions such as Techfest.
Resources:
The Wadhwani Electronics Lab is equipped with routine low-end instruments and also some advanced instruments for special purposes. Low-end instruments include oscilloscopes, function generators, multimeters, power supplies for use in teaching second-year electronics courses. Advanced instruments are available for advanced courses, sensitive or high-frequency measurements, etc. Each set-up has a networked PC which serves to display lab sheets, data sheets, and to access internet for related information. Apart from these resources, the lab has several development boards designed in-house for educational purposes. These boards are now used extensively both within IITB and other colleges.
