International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 National Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering & Technology (VNCET-30 Mar’12) Vidyavardhini’s College of Engineering and Technology, Vasai Page 45 CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (SCILAB) Mayur Jain, Sheetal Bhande, Aditya Chhatre, Amit Naik, # Vishal Pande, *Prafulla Patil Instrumentation, Vidyavardhini’s College of Engineering and Technology # Assistant Professor, Instrumentation, Vidyavardhini’s College of Engineering and Technology Address mayurjain0405@gmail.com ABSTRACT Most process control courses rely on MATLAB/ Simulink to fulfill, at least partially, their simulation needs. Albeit this choice represents a standard and rather satisfactory solution, the availability of such commercial software in academia should not be taken for granted. This paper shows that with some adjustments and moderate additional effort, teaching material developed with MATLAB/Simulink can be successfully replaced by equivalent material developed with Scilab/Scicos, a free and open source computing environment .This contribution presents remote process control and monitoring. The objective of this project is to access the control loop trainer kit remotely. The main motivation behind this project is the unavailability of such kits because of high cost in many institutions where it is extremely necessary. For this purpose we are using Scilab which is a free and open source software(FOSS) having powerful benefits and simplicity in hardware interfacing, ease in implementation of various soft controllers, etc. By using Scilab we can develop various controller algorithms like P,PI,PID etc. where end user can get real time process outputs. With further improvements in the same, the system can be operated over the internet and will have a very wide scope. KEYWORDS Process control, Real time control, Scilab, Distance education, Web based control. INTRODUCTION The World Wide Web has provided an opportunity for design and analysis of control systems through the Internet. An increasing number of Web-based software packages have been developed to enhance the teaching and design of control systems. Today, the most popular applications in control systems are Web-based real time laboratories. One of the aims in control education, therefore, is to teach the techniques and possible difficulties of theoretically based design methods when applied in practice. The control system design process involving practical experiments and observing the dynamics of a real plant gives a valuable insight. Simulations may also be a suitable complement in achieving this aim, however, in many cases they cannot replace a real experiment. The project includes a pressure control loop from the PID trainer kit of our laboratory. The loop consists of mainly one pressure transducer and one final control element to regulate and control the pressure through loop. To make the process real time work and remotely operable, signals from transducer and output to control valve is connected to computer via. Input Output module. On software part SCILAB is used for development of various control algorithms such as PID, PI, PD, model based, etc. Moreover we can experiment step change, ramp change response of the process. To make the process remotely accessible, client server connectivity is used through SCILAB. In final stage of the project, we will try to develop a website which will help students to access the trainer kit for experiment and study purpose through internet with the given time slots.