Design av PID-regulator baserad på kommersiell processormodul

Sammanfattning: The idea to develop  a platform for a PID-controller came from the need to control the temperature in  an espresso machine in a more exact way than a thermostat could perform. In discussions with Syntronic AB the idea developed into PID-control for industrial use. Syntronic AB suggested that the platform should be based on a commercially available processor module to shorten the development time. The suggestion included the use of the microcomputer Raspberry Pi, which supports USB, HDMI, memory card and Ethernet. The work began with establishing a schedule for the 10 weeks of the projects duration, and after that a system specification listing all functions, implementation and limitations was made. When the foundation of the system specification was done, a preliminary system design took shape. Because of the Raspberry Pi´s lack of Analog-to-Digital converter, a circuit board containing Wheatstone bridges, differential amplifiers and a two channel Analog-to-Digital converter was fabricated. The choice of Operative System fell on Linux Raspbian Wheezy, a popular Linux distribution with good documentation. Embedded programming was made solely in C language, Nginx was used as server application making it possible to show real-time graph and receive parameter input from a webpage. The webpage was written in PHP and JavaScript for server and client side respectively. To evaluate the PID-controller it was mounted inside an espresso machine where it controlled the temperature of the boiler. Aiming for a short settling time, parameters for the PID-controller was produced by testing.