chat, what's your recommended way of learning the theory behind PID controllers and autotuning? i need one that doesn't involve a 150 page treatise on z-transforms and poles in complex plane. i just want to write a script that makes heating in this house tolerable
i started with looking at textbooks covering this in continuous time which is both conceptually incomprehensible and involves diffequations which i have a personal vendetta against
a textbook covering control systems in discrete time i can understand, but it's way too long
my headmate tells me to go read a silicon company appnote from the late 90s or early 00s, which honestly might be a good idea
@whitequark Appnotes were written for engineers who just wanted to get something done and move on, which was a wonderful way of making them much more concise. Like you I largely zoned out in my control systems class because I couldn't see the connection between what they were talking about and what it did. Rue MacNohr on twitter taught themselves PID and their experience was interesting to me as an autodidact. Living in a ewaste recycle facility gave them an endless supply of parts to play with.
@ChuckMcManis (I actually never had a control systems class, I was studying bioengineering and bioinformatics, which I don't think even has those in the curriculum--although it ought to)
Tangentially related, on the off chance: do you maybe have recommendations on where to read about thermoregulation? I was wondering whether any of the mechanisms can affect sides of body unequally. I've found some neurology textbooks that implied that the answer is no, but were describing everything in a way that is slightly alien for me.
