Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems book by Tim Wescott

Well, I certainly think so!

If you are an experienced embedded systems programmer and have done no or little control systems, and if you need to pick it up for your job then you are squarely in the center of my target readership.

The book is lighter on examples than I would like -- right now it's kind of like meatloaf without much oatmeal. However, I recently taught a course using it as a textbook. I'm going to be taking all of the homework problems that I assigned for that course and posting them on the book's site, along with worked answers. I expect this will enhance the book considerably (and should it ever go to a second edition, you can expect that those examples will either be worked into the text or put at the end of each chapter as questions to be worked through).

When are those problem sets going to appear on your site? I want to see them. Never mind...I don't want to see them. I suppose the first thing to get straight is your idea of the typical embedded systems programmer. That is what I *really* want to know. What is his/her background and level of intellect?

If you know a lot of embedded systems programmers you know that there is no one 'typical' educational background. I think a motivated reader who has done well in a calculus course at some time in their lives, and who has done some embedded programming, would be able to get through the book. Having some familiarity with one or more of differential equations, practical DSP, practical closed-loop control (i.e. having coded up a PID and flailed around with parameters until it worked) would be helpful. Me getting those dang examples posted would be helpful, too.

Barring even more unscheduled work falling on my shoulders, I expect to start posting these in early August, perhaps earlier if I finish my edits to my presentation for the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston before the deadline.

Last year, after some 40 years since my school-book-learning control systems, I got a project shoved at me with a nasty control loop immersed in it. I ordered Tim's book over-nighted and was quickly back in business... and the chip worked great!

But I prefer using left-over cooked rice myself ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I vaguely remember an exchange about the book back then.

Was it an analog loop, or were you closing it digitally? I wouldn't expect my book to be the best possible one for practical analog control, but I could see it being the best _extant_ one.

Analog loop. But your "tuning" method revived all the memory cells ;-)

...Jim Thompson