Mechanical, electrical, and mechatronics departments know the problem: 12 to 16 rigs, 100 or more students, timetabling that is a patchwork of shifts and rotations. The result is uneven contact hours across a cohort sitting the same exam and the same job market. A browser-based simulator removes the constraint entirely.
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The problem
An industrial training rig runs into five figures USD once you add a programming terminal, guarding, and power distribution. Procurement, approval, and delivery commonly takes 12 to 24 months at most institutions. The students who motivated the purchase may have graduated before a single rung is written on the new equipment.
Studio 5000, TIA Portal, and GX Works are priced for industrial customers. Per-seat industrial pricing applied to a 100-student module is not viable. Version management across a heterogeneous lab adds further overhead that falls on academic staff rather than IT.
Distance learners, students on work-integrated learning placements, and postgraduate researchers cannot access physical lab equipment on demand. A web-based platform removes this barrier without requiring VPN access or remote desktop infrastructure.
When research projects and undergraduate teaching compete for the same physical rigs, one loses. Separating teaching onto a browser-based platform frees physical rigs for research use without scheduling conflicts.
The solution
Every licensed student in a module can log in simultaneously. There is no queue or shift allocation within the seats your institution has purchased, so contact hours become a scheduling choice rather than a lab-capacity constraint.
IEC 61131-3 for standards literacy, Allen-Bradley for mining and manufacturing exposure, Siemens for process industry contexts — all in one platform. Mechatronics graduates who can navigate multiple vendor environments are more employable; the curriculum can reflect that without additional licences.
Fault diagnosis by logical elimination — not visual inspection — is a skill that is almost impossible to teach reliably on shared physical hardware where physical state is visible. The fault-injection module hides the fault source and requires students to diagnose through logic analysis alone.
Six structured interview preparation tracks give final-year students practice under timed conditions before they enter the job market. Graduate outcome reporting gains a differentiator beyond pass rates.
The /team admin console gives demonstrators and academic staff a view of who has completed what, before due dates rather than after. Learning paths can be structured to gate advanced scenarios behind foundational completions.
Postgraduate students investigating fault-tolerant sequencing, redundant logic, or multi-axis coordination can use sandbox mode without occupying a physical rig. Sandbox sessions are unconstrained in length and complexity.
Curriculum coverage
Every concept below maps to a graded scenario or sandbox exercise students write and run in the browser — from first-year fundamentals through to postgraduate state-machine and structured-text work. Concurrent access is unlimited, so a 100-student module can be in the editor at the same time without a rig queue.
Pilot outcomes
Delivery: can licensed students reach an auto-graded pass on managed campus devices without installing vendor software or booking a physical rig?
Evidence: can teaching staff use cohort progress, attempts, and exported results to identify learners who need support before practical assessment?
Pricing
| Cohort size | Annual cost (USD) | vs individual Pro ($249/seat) |
|---|---|---|
| 30 seats | $5,970 / yr | Save $1,500 vs individual |
| 60 seats | $11,940 / yr | Save $3,000 vs individual |
| 120 seats | $23,880 / yr | Save $6,000 vs individual |
Teams seats at $199/yr vs $249/yr individual Pro — approximately 20% discount. See full pricing →
What's included
Related institutional pages
Create a free team account and invite your module cohort. No procurement cycle. No installation. Every student on day one.
Use a real cohort before making a purchasing decision. Send your work email and organisation; we’ll reply with a pilot plan and only ask for the details relevant to your setup.