Understanding and Design of an Arduino-based PID Controller

This thesis presents research and design of a Proportional, Integral, and Derivative (PID) controller that uses a microcontroller (Arduino) platform. The research part discusses the structure of a PID algorithm with some motivating work already performed with the Arduino-based PID controller from various fields. An inexpensive Arduino-based PID controller designed in the laboratory to control the temperature, consists of hardware parts: Arduino UNO, thermoelectric cooler, and electronic components while the software portion includes C/C++ programming. The PID parameters for a particular controller are found manually. The role of different PID parameters is discussed with the subsequent comparison between different modes of PID controllers. The designed system can effectively measure the temperature with an error of ± 0.6℃ while a stable temperature control with only slight deviation from the desired value (setpoint) is achieved. The designed system and concepts learned from the control system serve in pursuing inexpensive and precise ways to control physical parameters within a desired range in our laboratory

On the Selection of Tuning Methodology of FOPID Controllers for the Control of Higher Order Processes

In this paper, a comparative study is done on the time and frequency domain tuning strategies for fractional order (FO) PID controllers to handle higher order processes. A new fractional order template for reduced parameter modeling of stable minimum/non-minimum phase higher order processes is introduced and its advantage in frequency domain tuning of FOPID controllers is also presented. The time domain optimal tuning of FOPID controllers have also been carried out to handle these higher order processes by performing optimization with various integral performance indices. The paper highlights on the practical control system implementation issues like flexibility of online autotuning, reduced control signal and actuator size, capability of measurement noise filtration, load disturbance suppression, robustness against parameter uncertainties etc. in light of the above tuning methodologies.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

Liquid level control of a couple tank system based on smooth trajectory tracking using PID controller

Industries such as petro-chemical industries, paper making industries, waste management and others are the vital industries where liquid level and flow control are essential. Liquids will be processed by chemical or mixing treatment in the tanks, but always the level fluid in the tanks must be controlled, and the flow between tanks must be regulated in the presence of nonlinearity and inexact model description of the plant. This project investigates the usage of Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller in controlling the liquid level in the second tank of Coupled-Tank plant through variable manipulation of water pump in the first tank. This project presents the ability of controlling the liquid level of a coupled tank system that used Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) as a main controller hardware. A PID controller has been developed and designed via ladder programme of CXprogrammer. A mathematical model of the couple tank system was derived by refering to the experimental manual and verified by using MATLAB software. The controller parameters derived from the simulation and design process using MATLAB as well. The project is based on Single Input Single Output (SISO) system which mean the liquid will entering the tank 1 (pump 1) in couple tank while the level control is in tank 2 in the condition of pump 2 is set OFF. The aim of the project is to design controller that can maintain the level and minimize the error (SPCV) value at any of given set point(SP). It is to show that PID controller could produce appropriate control signal to the coupled-tank system and minimize the error value for the system. A series of tracking performance tests conducted to evaluate the controller performance in comparison to other controller such are fuzzy controller, DMRAC controller or other controller that used by other reearcher before. . The outcome of the project reveals that PID controller could carry a small error rate when the appropriate value of Kp, Ki, and K are applied. The framework of this project is generic enough to have an overview of the possible outcome before implementing the PID controller in real-time system in the future

Development of a MATLAB/Simulink - Arduino environment for experimental practices in control engineering teaching

This project presents the steps followed when implementing a platform based on MATLAB/Simulink and Arduino for the restoration of digital control practices. During this project, an Arduino shield has being designed. Along with this, a web page has also been created where all the material done during all this project is available and can be freely used. So anyone interested on doing a project can have a starting point instead of starting a project from scratch, which most of times this results hard to implement. Taking all this into account, the document is structured in the following manner. The first chapter talks about the hardware used and designed. The second one explains the software used and the configurations done on the laboratory’s PCs. After that, the web page Duino-Based Learning is explained, where you can find the five projects carried out in the "Control Automàtic" subject with their corresponding results. In this section too, as an additional research, the implemented indirect adaptive control will be explained, where the parameter estimation has been done by the Recursive Least Square algorithm. The last four sections before presenting the conclusions of the work, correspond to a satisfaction questionnaire done to the teachers that have used the setup, the costs and saves of the project, the environmental impact and the planning of the project respectively

IMPLEMENTATION OF CASCADE CONTROL USING A PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC CONTROLLER

The aim of the project is to implement cascade control using a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The PLC module has been successfully used for ON/OFF control in sequential processes. However in this project the PLC has to be configured to accept and monitor a variable input and to supply a variable output ( 4mA to 20mA) signal in-order to control a final element (e.g. control valve). The significance of this project is to make a comparison between a PLC and a distributed control system (DCS) in terms of controllability and system simplicity. The project requires familiarization in the field of plant process control and instrumentation since it involves the design and implementation of a cascade loop. The cascade controller has been designed to control the level of a liquid in a distillation tower. Familiarization with the PLC hardware and software is another important aspect of the project and took up the bulk of the project time. The final result of the project shows that the PLC is a versatile controller that is able to perform PID control effectively with a relatively simple system. The PLC PID control system is flexible therefore it can be configured to implement any type of control loop e.g. Cascade control

Control and monitoring of solar photovoltaic panel using PLC

A renewable energy source plays an important role in electricity generation. Various renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, and biomass can be used for generation of electricity and for meeting our daily energy needs. Energy from the sun is the best option for electricity generation as it is available everywhere and is free to harness. On an average the sunshine hour in Malaysia is about eight hours annually also the sun shine shines in Malaysia for about nine months in a year. Electricity from the sun can be generated through the solar photovoltaic modules (SPV). The SPV comes in various power output to meet the load requirement. Maximization of power from a solar photo voltaic module (SPV) is of special interest as the efficiency of the SPV module is very low. A peak power tracker is used for extracting the maximum power from the SPV module. The present work describes the potential system benefits of simple tracking solar system using stepper motor and light sensor. This method increases power collection efficiency by developing a device that tracks the sun to keep the panel at the right angle to its rays. A solar tracking system is designed, implemented and experimentally tested. The design details and the experimental results are shown

Chaotic multi-objective optimization based design of fractional order PI{\lambda}D{\mu} controller in AVR system

In this paper, a fractional order (FO) PI{\lambda}D\mu controller is designed to take care of various contradictory objective functions for an Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) system. An improved evolutionary Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA II), which is augmented with a chaotic map for greater effectiveness, is used for the multi-objective optimization problem. The Pareto fronts showing the trade-off between different design criteria are obtained for the PI{\lambda}D\mu and PID controller. A comparative analysis is done with respect to the standard PID controller to demonstrate the merits and demerits of the fractional order PI{\lambda}D\mu controller.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figure