We’ve been hiding away in air-conditioned comfort to wait out the hot weather afflicting most of the US right now. Luckily we’re keeping busy with the great links coming into our tips box.
[Brett] sent us a note about his work on the new Arduino PID library. He is the author of the original library and recently decided it was time for a ground-up rewrite. But along the way he took the time to explain PID control and the choices he made during development.
We see a lot of PID controllers around here, like this router based espresso machine add-on. Proportional-Integral-Derivative Controllers are a way to make sure the control you intended to get from your devices is actually achieved in practice. They monitor a process and accumulate results over time in order to account for future events. From what we’ve just described you can see why the subject needs to be demystified.
Get yourself elbow-deep into [Brett’s] article. He does a great job of discussing each issue, and uses a multitude of easily understandable graphs to show the hurdles each portion of code is meant to overcome.