Setting up feedback control experiments can be challenging,
especially if the control law needs to be executed
at hard, real-time intervals. There are many commercially
available real-time data acquisition and control
solutions. Experiments based on these commercially
available options have been used in controls courses and
have been well-received by students [4], [5], [6].
Given the cost of engineering laboratories and the
pressures on many university budgets, low-cost or student
owned experiments have attracted some attention in
the literature. Several researchers have presented ideas
for low-cost or students-owned plants and investigated
how to use these plants to enrich controls courses and
facilitate different pedagogical techniques [7], [8], [9],