Beginner's guide to controls

This guide has been written with the primary aim of assisting Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with no prior experience of electronics controls. If you make, or are about to make, a product that needs an electronic control system, and you are unsure of how to procure the control system, this guide is written for you.

I will be covering a wide range of topics, though generally not in any great depth. The idea is to give you an overview of the main issues involved, as a first step towards enabling you to make better informed decisions about the controls for your product. Hopefully you will be able to get through the whole guide in 2-3 hours without feeling your eyes glaze over too many times.

Tip: Have some strong coffee on hand, just in case.

Our mission is to sell a particular brand of controller. Expect some bias. However, don't be too surprised at an occasional unbiased description or comparison of competing product classes.

What you will get out of it

The guide is designed to give you an overview of electronic control systems, including

• What they do;
• How they work;
• Sensors and actuators;
• How you need to involve yourself in the implementation process (even if you delegate the actual "doing");
• Various types of controller;
• Selecting the best controller for your needs

What you need before you start (prerequisites)

• A need to know (motivation);
• An understanding of how your machine (product, apparatus) works physically (mechanics, chemistry, dynamics).

How to read this guide (and stay sane)

There is a lot of material presented here. Some of it may very well go deeper than you need or can understand, especially if your knowledge of electrical matters is limited. Don't let that put you off. Read what you can absorb. Skim the rest so maybe you can at least learn a few of the technical terms or recognize certain issues that will need addressing. After that, consider this as a reference source you can go back to as and when specific issues arise. If you are like me you learn best when you have a need for something, which is far better than learning from costly mistakes!

If you are a SPLat customer (Some gentle propaganda)

Here at SPLat Controls we take great pride in being able to help customers with little or no knowledge of control systems or electronics to procure good controls for their products. That is reflected in the vast amounts of educational and training materials we provide, including this guide, and in an 87% customer satisfaction rating recorded by an independent consultant's survey in 2004.

For bona fide customers or prospective customers, we always attempt to assist with issues of matching the best controller to an application. If you lack the engineering expertise to match specifications between controller and connected sensors and actuators, we can assist. We will still need you to supply specifications on the items outside our controller, and if you have studied this guide you will be better equipped to seek out that kind of information and maybe do initial screening.

However, there are caveats:

1. It must make commercial sense. We can obviously provide more assistance to a 1,000 unit per year customer than to a casual 1-off buyer.
2. We can only assist you to the degree that we receive accurate information from you.
3. While we will assist, unless a signed agreement exists to the contrary, nothing we say is to be taken as professional advice. You remain responsible for the outcomes. It is your responsibility to either educate and inform yourself or to seek independent expert advice.

This guide is still under development. Please watch this space!