So, I've put the finishing touches on my book, and the publisher's
marketing department is asking me questions. Some of them I don't have
good answers to, because (a) I'm on the fringe of my target audience,
and (b) everyone learns differently, and my way is through osmosis and
thinking, which doesn't make it easy to cough up a bunch of specific
information like conferences and magazines.

The book's title is "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems", the
subject should be self explanatory. So if you feel that you're in the
target audience, and if you're in a generous mood, here are some
questions I have for you:

What do they call you at work (sorry -- what's your official job title?)

What magazines do you read? Websites you visit regularly?

Do you go to conferences? Which ones? (this is the one that motivated
this posting, by the way -- I only go to the Embedded Systems
Conference; I know there's a circuit-related one in Silicon Valley but I
can't remember the name, nor do I know if there are any ones anywhere else.

Have you had to close a control loop recently? Did you do a web search?
What keywords did you use?

Have you read any related books? Was it just a college text, or was it
specifically directed at closed loop control for the practicing embedded
systems designer? What did you think of it? What was it?

Thanks in advance.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:39:46 -0800, Tim Wescott wrote:

Isn't that what academicians call "negative feedback"? ;-)

Good Luck!
Rich

"Tim Wescott" <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote in message
news:EqmdnWnD9PR-z2LenZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@web-ster.com...
A self procreating fuck up?

Genome wrote:



--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:21:10 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

Hmm. That's the finest definition of life I've heard!

Jon

Hi Tim

They call me Software Engineer (they call me other names too when they find
bugs in the software, but I doubt you are interested in knowing), but my
business card says Software
Development Manager.






Not so often, I wish I had the money/time to attend to more conferences. The
last one was IC-AI (International Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
which I published and presented a paper.


Yes. Yes. PID control; control theory; fuzzy control


Yes. A couple of books actually.
Got some hints from Schaums for control theory, and two other books that I
borrowed from the university's library.
The problem with all of them is that they go deep on the math of control
theory but are not practical (no relationship between CT and embedded
devices)



Do I get a free book?

Good luck with your publishing... A man has three missions on Earth: Have
kids, plant a tree and write a book. I accomplish the first two... someday
I'll write a book.

Cheers

Padu

"Tim Wescott" <tim@seemywebsite.com> wrote in message
news:EqmdnWnD9PR-z2LenZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@web-ster.com...
I hopr you have lest out Nyquist diagrasm and Root Locus. Never seen anybody
using them on a real design other than academics.


Tam

On Friday, in article
<EqmdnWnD9PR-z2LenZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@web-ster.com>
tim@seemywebsite.com "Tim Wescott" wrote:

They need what they think they need for standard tick box list of checks.

Sounds like a sensible idea fo a book..

I used to have all sorts of job titles, as often every company has different
meanings for job titles (let alone the made up ones that appear now).

Having spent over 12 years working for myself in a one man company I
have various titles (some legal, some other meanings) depending on what
I am doing at the time and the questioner. Job titles only really have
relevance to questions.

Magazines IEE/IEEE periodicals (some), Circuit Cellar..

Websites are not something I spent a lot of regular time on specific ones
as it depends what I am working on or doing, except in bursts for datasheets
or specific issues, it would be Dilbert, Google, Ebay.

Never gone to a conference, occasionally seem some of the papers. From
various sources it depends on the hosting country, speakers country,
sometimes who is sponsoring their 'research' and what is deemed patentable
under which jurisdiction as to whether you see enough detail anyway. I know
of cases in many fields where published papers are very 'sanitised' for
varying reasons to make you wonder if the paper is worthwhile.

Mainly revisiting various loop controls/tuning for PID, servo loops and
nuances. Considering some of the project time spans, recent could be two
years (due to many other things).

Most of them I found too abstract or too ideal mathematical models with lots
of assumptions. some of the worst assumptions I have seen is we have a model
for an actutator/motor that applies to all actuators/motors, where as in
real life modeling of the subsystem is quite complex and cannot always be
done theoretically but has to be done at first empirically as the full design
is 'n' stages down the road. In one instance to get the model and even think
of tuning it was complicated by differing response times of sensors to software

Quadrature encoders
position indicators
optical position from line scan processing

Further complicated by temperature, standing or moving before hand or worse
still some of it was effected by different control loops controlling
high voltage light sources and other parts of the system.

That was even before you looked at mechanical interactions, tolerances,
determining fault conditions (mechanical, electrical, optical).

Too often the books forget about fault conditions, that can be directly
determined or have to be determined from other sources.

A lot of theory books are a bit like the old sciences joke

A bookie wanted to know if there was a scientific way to
determine the outcome of any horse race, so he asked the
three scientists.

The chemist said "Too many unknowns and variables"

The biologist said "Too many factors to make it possible"

The Physicist said "Yes"

When the bookie asked how, the physicist said

"For spherical horses in a vacuum"

The worst demo of control software for computer (PC and larger) data
acquistion systems I saw had classic limits and real world is somewhere
else issues. Basically the demo consisted of a model of a simple oven that
was heated and its temperature would rise, until the door was opened. The
longer the door was closed or open the higher or lower the temperature would
go.

Now those here would hopefully know that if the door was opened the lowest
temperature that could be reached was ambient in real life, in a model
should be absolute zero. This model had no limits so the temperature could
go below absolute zero or higher than the sun! So did not show the software
in best light of showing how good the software could be.

Hopefully your book will not be like that.

--
Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

Tim Wescott wrote:
I knew it!
http://books.elsevier.com/us//elsevi...unity=elsevier
The book is too small.

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:39:46 -0800, Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.com>
wrote:

IEEE Spectrum, .....for some reason they won't send me ESP
I got ESP back in 1995, but they won't renew my free subscription
CircuitCellar, Nuts and Volts, sometimes Servo.

lost time, conference fees and travel costs.


Quantum Programming. I thought it was great!
A good summary of state machines and an alterative ways to use them.

On Time and Under Pressure by Ed Sullivan. An old book. . A great
overview of what makes a great organization tick, particularly the
Version Control and Automated Build processes,

Patent it Yourself, David Pressman. A great step by step process for
submitting a patent.

The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing
Free PDF book. I've been reading chapters. Great stuff.

I don't generally read "controls" books anymore unless they are
product manuals. For anything new, I'll read technical publications,
or the web. For anything old I just refer to my bookshelf.

Dougal McDougal of that Elk wrote:


I use root locus when I'm brainstorming controllers, and I have my
spreadsheet program display top & bottom Nyquist & Bode plots when I'm
tuning from measured frequency responses -- I put a circle of diameter
1/sqrt(2) on the Nyquist plot to indicate the 3dB sensitivity point, and
tune to that.

I _don't_ spend many pages showing how to construct root locus plots --
while you do learn something from it there's a gazillion math
applications that will do it for you.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

Fred Bloggs wrote:


Yes, that's it. Done, thanks be.

condense the wisdom down, eh?

I'm going to take the first complimentary copy they give me and tape a
red pen to it on a string, to make marginal comments. I expect that if
it lives to a 2nd edition it will grow.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

Paul Carpenter wrote:


the title. Most of the examples are simplified, so that I can talk to
the point that I'm trying to make, but I try to keep the other issues
visible.

I think there's a place for simplistic models -- I've done motion
controllers where the emphasis was on getting a mechanism from point A
to point B without toasting any electronics or breaking/jamming the
mechanism, and accuracy was taken care of by other parts of the system.
In those cases a very simple model that ignored such complications
like backlash and friction worked very well -- as long as I remembered
what the limitations of the model were. I tried to keep up a continuing
theme that you need to remember what assumptions you made about your
model, and what those assumptions mean.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

Fred Bloggs wrote:
I love
"Readership: PRIMARY MARKET: ...
SECONDARY MARKET: Engineering students at the *more practical*
engineering and technical schools; ..." emphasis added ;/

Lets out my Alma Mater.

The advanced BS(Physics) students came to Phillips Hall to take our
*REQUIRED* course in quantum mechanics. In the 60's I would have gotten
more hands on "engineering" experience as a BS(Physics) student than I
had a chance of as a 5-yr BSEE candidate. I fault IEEE and other
professional societies for creating that problem with ill thought out
course "standards". But the basic problem predates the various
societies. My father got an ME degree, rather than persuing an EE
degree, because (in the 1920's) the ME candidates received a much
broader background in what would now be considered EE. At that time and
this institution, EE was power plant, power distribution, and AC/DC
machines. Whereas, he had the opportunity to study in an "applicable [
*NOT APPLIED* ] math course" what we routinely use when working with
op-amps.

I'll consider dismounting a major pet peeve hobby horse.

PS. If anyone reading this is member of appropriate IEEE committee on
educational standards, my reply-to is valid and I would be more than
happy to contribute to improving the situation.

Anyone get impression that this is a hot button issue for me ;/

Richard Owlett wrote:
I was about to mention that no reply-to showed on your article,
when I decided to look at the full headers and discovered it
there. Yet it didn't show up for normal headers on NS 4.75, while
my own reply-to does! Then I realized it was identical to your
'from' address, and concluded that NS had suppressed the non-useful
additional header display.

I still keep finding ways in which NS 4.7x is superior to
Thunderbird 1.5.

--
Some informative links:
news:news.announce.newusers
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

"Richard Owlett" <rowlett@atlascomm.net> wrote in message
news:12017sgl188k635@corp.supernews.com...
It am easy try rowremovethisbitherelett@atandthisbittoolascomm.re verseten

See and I have not even have to be member of committeeee to give you
appropriate information to solve your problem plus you am not have pay me
monee for find wrong answer........ Plus I went back and peer reviewed
myselv so iz correct.

DNA

Hi Tim,

Tim Wescott wrote:
dickhead. oops, senior design engineer

IEEE trans:
industry applications
industrial electronics
power electronics
control systems (although almost entirely useless)

PCIM, HFPC, APEC

yep. nope. did it all from first principles, using a pen and paper. then
fiddled with resultant parts to optimise both BOM and response.

a plethora of them. Computer Controller Systems, Astrom & Wittenmark are
right at the top of the list. Slotine & Li, applied nonlinear control is
damn good too, but not for the fainthearted. as is macejowskis
multivariable control. I have a couple of dozen control books, some of
the oldest ones are brilliant - far less use of brute-force techniques,
much more emphasis on understanding. Automatic Control Systems
Enigneering vol. 2, Langill, is fabulous.

Cheers
Terry

On Saturday, in article
<lZ6dnS0pVYzZA53ZnZ2dnUVZ_v-dnZ2d@web-ster.com>
tim@seemywebsite.com "Tim Wescott" wrote:
.....

.......

I realise that there has to be simplification, but a lot of theory does
not USUALLY cover the applied like what to do when an external sensor
or feedback in the loop says there is a fault and how to make sure the
loop (and the system) return to the correct state (whatever that may be).

An example would be printing shop guillotines that usually require two
spaced out buttons to be pressed at the same time for the whole of the cut
process. On the basis that if both hands are on the buttons then the
operator's hands are not in the machinery! Now dpending on how the system
operates there are basically three safety stop states - stop, move back
a little or return to start position.

I have seen some control systems really screwed by an 'abort' function
that need complete restarts or worse after that, basically because the
control loop hardware/software could not effectively reset correctly.

Quite often I have seen customers who do not understand the limitations
and assumptions in their systems let alone any model they think they have
created.

Some of the major control loop problems I have seen is applying open loop
blocks to an overall system that is closed loop. Mainly because they
did not understand the limits of the blocks they were using, most
notably delays, determinicity and sampling restraints.

--
Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

Richard Owlett wrote:
TW must be talking about WPI http://www.wpi.edu/ , pronounced Wuss-duh
in those parts.


Wes

Fred Bloggs wrote:

-snip-


My Thesis advisor once told me that the first time he visited WPI he
spent about an hour on the interstate -- he was looking for Wu'sta. He
passed by Wor-ches-ter several times before it sunk in...

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/