The Versatile Laboratory Aid (VELA) is a 4-channel data logging tool that was created as part of a joint venture by Ashley Clarke, Keith Jones and David Binney of Leeds University and Educational Electronics.

The basic VELA carries a single 4KB EPROM (ISL1 or ISL1*) which contains the basic input and output routines that handle the keyboard input and 8-digit LED display output together with seventeen user selectable programs which range from a 4-channel digital volt meter to a random event monitor which could be used with a Geiger Counter Probe to measure and log radiation levels from a source material.

[6] The ROMs were generally shipped on 2732 EPROM chips and they could be sent back to Educational Electronics to be updated with enhanced firmware when it became available.

In 1986 an article in the Electronic Systems News Spring Journal[10] stated "4000 teachers now possess a VELA, but it is suspected that more than half of these have never been used."

When connected to a microcomputer, the data captured could be stored and manipulated using a variety of different software applications that were available for the VELA.