Learning About a PID Controller
What you’ll learn:
- What’s a good prototyping and learning platform?
- What’s on the CONTEx-511 Emona Controls Explorer board?
- How to take advantage of Digilent’s Analog Discovery Studio Max.
Emona Instruments’ new Controls Explorer Board (Fig. 1) is part of the company’s Telecommunication Instructional Modeling System (TIMS). In the video (watch above), Carlo Manfredini highlights its use and features. The latest board is designed to teach about analog systems and functions like building a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller.
The CONTEx-511 board plugs into Digilent’s Analog Discovery Studio Max (Fig. 2). The Digilent Studio family also includes the Analog Discovery Studio.
Emona also has boards for the NI ELVIS III training system:
- Emona DxIQ-45G: analog and digital communications
- Emona FOTEx: fiber-optic communications
- Emona Systems and Signals: digital signal processing and circuit analysis
Like the Digilent Studio Max system, the ELVIS III provides a plug-in base with on-board test equipment including voltage source, PC-based oscilloscope support, and more. Both platforms are designed to run NI software on a PC.
The modular approach allows the base to be used by multiple students or developers, each having their own plug-in board. This allows for offline configuration and wiring with easy installation prior to testing. Emona has a curriculum for each of the plug-in boards.
About the Author
Carlo Manfredini
Research and Development Director, Emona Instruments
Carlo Manfredini graduated from UNSW, Sydney in 1983 with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (Hons) and worked in several design & manufacturing environments before establishing Emona TIMS along with Alfred Breznik in 1986. Focusing predominantly on the design and development side of the business, Carlo also contributes to the Marketing side of the business, utilizing his skills developed via his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree completed in 1999.
In his spare time (what’s that?), he enjoys coaching children in Robotics tournaments such as First Lego League and Robocup Junior.
William G. Wong
Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF
I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.
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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.
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