We report on a home-made inverted pendulum system for education in Control Engineering. The intention for developing such a home-made system, as opposed to purchasing a commercial product, is improved maintainability of the system. Specifically, we aimed at high modularity; and employed many industrial grade components, which tend to have better support from the manufacturers, compared to the case of purely educational products. Both modularity and product support are particularly important in view of the rapid changes in software and information-technology-related hardware, which often hamper maintainability of laboratory instruments used in the educational setting. As a bonus, the use of industry-grade components enables the students to get acquainted with “real” parts, as opposed to educational “toys”.
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