Department of Electrical Engineering

Control Systems (ELE-321), Spring 2024

Lab Handout #5: Feedback Temperature Control System

Instructor: Dr. Abdul Baseer Buriro

Name: _________________________
CMS ID: _______________________

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 Rubrics for Lab Reports
PLO-3, Psychomotor-3, “Develop a closed loop control system”
S. Criteria Beginning Developing Competent Outstanding
No. (40%) (60%) (80%) (100 %)

1 Task Performed
(hardware
interfacing, circuit
development, and
code)
(70%)

2. Report Structure Figures, tables, Figures, graphs, The figures, Figures, tables,
(30%) and/or graphs and/or tables were tables, and/or and/or graphs
were poorly fine but contained graphs were good were nicely
constructed and errors. The overall looking and the presented with
contained errors. format was broken overall report complete captions
The overall format and contained format was good and the format
was out of order grammatical and but still needs was amazing.
and contained contextual errors. some
many grammatical improvements.
and contextual
errors.

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Lab Learning Outcomes
After completing this session, the students should be able to interface multiple sensors/devices
with myRIO and write a LabVIEW code to implement a temperature control (feedback/close
loop) system.

Introduction
A temperature control system automatically controls the temperature of an object or an area
(like in air conditioners and refrigerators), where the temperature is automatically adjusted as per
the reference input. To implement a temperature control system, we need a temperature sensor, a
controller, and a cooling device (like a fan) or a system.
In this lab, we will use a thermistor as a feedback element, a dc motor as the plant (i.e., fan), the
inverse of the difference between the desired and actual temperature as the simple components,
shown in Figure 1. This lab aims to automatically adjust the fan speed by detecting the
surrounding temperature.

Desired Temperature Output Temp

Fan
Temperature r(t) Control c(t)

Feedback
Element

Figure 1 The block diagram of temperature control.

The thermistor – “thermal” + “resistor” – is a two-terminal semiconductor device whose

resistance varies with temperature. Most thermistors are of the negative temperature coefficient
(NTC) type, meaning their resistance varies inversely with temperature.
The temperature and resistance of a thermistors are related by a mathematical model called
1 3
Steinhart-Hart equation, i.e., = A+ BlnR+ C ( lnR ) , where T is the temperature in degree
T
Kelvins, R is the resistance at a particular T in Ω, A , B, and C are Steinhart-Hart coefficents.
The dc motor requires a high current, consequently cannot be directly connected with the
myRIO. H-bridge module, shown in figure 2, is a circuit used generally to interface a DC motor.
The speed of a DC motor is controlled through pulse wave modulation (PWM). Perform the
following steps to interface a thermistor and a DC motor with the myRIO.

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 Connect VDD and VT of the voltage divider circuit to appropriate myRIO pins mentioned in
Figure 2.
 Connect the battery to the appropriate pins of the H-bridge module. Interconnect the ground
of the H-bridge, myRIO, and the battery.
 Use the PWM block of the myRIO module and then connect it with the H-bridge ENA pin.
 Use two digital input-output (DIO) blocks and connect them with the H-bridge (IN1 and IN2)
pins.
 Connect the motor with OUT1 and OUT2 pins of the H-bridge.

Figure 4 Block diagram to convert thermistor resistance to temperature in centigrade.

Figure 5 Block diagram of the main VI.

Tasks

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1. Interface the components with myRIO and run the VIs provided.
2. What could be the possible purpose of the case structure used in the main VI?
3. What is the effect desired temperature (when it is below and higher than the measured
temperature) on the speed and direction of the motor?

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