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Comment by plusplusungood | Hacker News Reader

I'm looking for something similar for PID controllers, or control systems in general. Specifically for a teenager. Most sources I can find are either college textbooks or overly simple summaries for FIRST Lego League.

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George Gillard's PID document is circulated widely for teaching high school students about PID for the VEX Robotics Competition: https://smithcsrobot.weebly.com/uploads/6/0/9/5/60954939/pid... I'd also add a +1 to the suggestion of the Controls Engineering in FRC book, but the math in that book is significantly more complex than Gillard's guide.

Elliott Williams (editor of Hackaday) held a very interesting talk this year at CCCamp that in very simple terms explained the components of a PID loop. Highly recommended! https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57111-pid_loops_control_all_...

https://file.tavsys.net/control/controls-engineering-in-frc....

This is pretty complex but its been super helpful for me in terms of understanding PID controllers.

That is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Maybe a touch more complicated than what my 11 year old is ready for; but something he can stretch a bit with. Thank you!

o/t but … I was attempting to understand how one might apply controls systems to a teenager until one of my internal processing threads got around to the correct reading of your comment.

Humans are just complicated plants!

(A plant is a generic term used in controls for “the system you are controlling”)

In my graduation days I've used this[1] and found it very useful.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohamed-Mourad-Lafifi/p...

I found this very insightful for a hobby project I worked on: https://controlguru.com/table-of-contents/

https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/pid/pidWithoutAPhd.pd...

Terry Davis has a nice video of him demoing a physics program he wrote, where he is coding a PID for a rocket.

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