Evaluation of student software tools for supporting an understanding of PID tuning

There are many software tools available for students to implement PID control laws, but these software tools are not all equally flexible, easy to use, accessible and hence effective. This paper gives a brief review of three tools: (i) author built tools in MATLAB (Mathworks, 2017); (ii) TSC software (TSC, 2017) and (iii) PISIM software (Postlethwaite, 2017). The evaluation considers aspects such as convenience and cost for the academic as well as accessibility and useability for the students. The main results in the paper are written in such a way as to assist staff in deciding in what software its worth investing time and effort developing resources and student activities.