A Portable Low-Cost Arduino-Based Laboratory Kit for Control Education

This abstract gives full details of a recently developed laboratory kit in the Dpt of Automation Engineering, ATEI of Thessaloniki, Greece, to serve the needs of undergraduate and postgraduate control education in a number of relevant courses. The lack of sufficient funding and staff for laboratory equipment purchase and maintenance, mainly due to the recent economic crisis, led us to a drastic reformation of the laboratory practical courses, which are now based on cheap take-home kits, equipped with Arduino-based electronics and compatible sensors. There is no doubt that low-cost take-home equipment can raise the student's interest in control theory and practice, by allowing them to study in their own place and in any convenient time. The ease with which embedded control can be applied tends to increase the percentage of students involved in the design and testing of basic as well as more advanced control, with extra project or thesis work, as the time saved in the experimental setup and control, is invested to deeper study of the underpinning theory.