An APMonitor Temperature Lab PID Control Experiment for Undergraduate Students

Students born in a digital era require adjusted teaching and learning methodologies incorporating new technologies. A common difficulty found by students is how to test their controller designs in a real system. Thus, the development of affordable, portable and easy to use feedback control kits is highly desirable. The idea is that both lecturers and students can perform simple practical experiments anytime and anywhere. The APMonitor temperature control lab is an Arduino based control kit which fulfils these requirements. Proportional, integrative and derivative control is in operation in the vast majority of industrial process control loops. Thus, it is a mandatory topic in most undergraduate introductory feedback control courses. A teaching/learning PID control experiment for undergraduate Biomedical Engineering student’s based on the temperature control lab is reported here. Results received from students are presented.