Microcontroller-Based Experiments for a Control Systems Course in Electrical Engineering Technology

A microcontroller-based system is used to illustrate experimental concepts in a Control Systems course in an Electrical Engineering Technology program. Students are able to experiment with different control strategies ranging from an open-loop to PID control. Students are asked to reason and discuss the benefits and drawbacks associated with each strategy. The microcontroller system has been chosen to minimize the learning curve for the students in such a way that they are mostly concerned with acquiring and representing the appropriate signals from the system as well as experimenting with changing the parameters of the system in each case.