Didactic platform for DC motor speed and position control in Z-plane

This paper describes how to implement a low-cost didactic platform designed to teach or reinforce discrete control theory concepts. The controllers used in this work (P, PI, PD, and PID) are suitable for undergraduate students but the same platform could be used to explain and test advanced controllers to graduate students. This document shows, step by step, how to control a DC motor speed and position, along with the most common problems and its solutions, commonly overlooked in the literature. It also explains how to simulate the system behavior and compares the simulations with the real data, showing an average correlation coefficient of ρ=0.983. •Create a PC-Microcontroller interface using C#.•Obtain a DC motor transfer function and perform its digitalization.•Design different controllers and code their equations in differences in the microprocessor.•Implement the nonlinearities, both in the microcontroller and the Simulink model.•Evaluate the system behavior in different scenarios.