A novel and pedagogical approach to teach PID controller with LabVIEW signal express

A novel and Pedagogical approach for teaching the PID controller and its tuning parameters to the students and trainee engineers working in Control and Automation Engineering is presented. In short, a trainer/simulator for Proportional- Integral-Derivative Controller is developed. A third order system (Transfer Function) was used. However, there is no limiting factor in using the higher order system in the simulator. Ziegler- Nichols tuning method was used to obtain the optimum or initial values of the PID Controller. LabVIEW Signal Express software developed by NI was used. In specific, the control & design kit module was used. Graphical Interface along with the tuning knobs of the three term controller was highly helpful in finalizing the PID Parameters.