A Modeling And Controls Course Using Microcontrollers

Microcontrollers are being used to support the laboratory and project components of a junior level mechanical/manufacturing engineering course in system modeling and control. Previously the course primarily used Labview and Data AcQuisition (DAQ) cards with Personal Computers. However, upon completion of the course students were not able to design and implement practical control systems. Recently the course has been evolving towards low cost commodity hardware found in mass produced consumer products. This past year the course used custom designed circuit boards based on the Atmel Mega32 microcontroller. While these new boards are low cost ($37), they support a much more relevant and mature set of pedagogical experiences.The objective of the paper is to present enough information to allow other educators to evaluate the viability of the controllers for use in their own courses. All of the board designs, lab descriptions, sample programs and course textbook are available on the course home page [1].