6.11 Community control toolbox

The community toolbox project is led by Anthony Rossiter with sponsorship from MathWorks  (under project "A MATLAB community toolbox to support learning of control 101") and input from numerous international colleagues. 

The resources/toolbox developed here are now available from within MATLAB using the "add-ons" button - search for control 101. The resources are shared under a BSD license so users can edit, adopt and use freely. 

More information and guidance is available in a youtube playlist.

Once the toolbox is installed, you can use the following command line prompt to get convenient access to soft links for all the files, including the livescripts.: 

>>doc Control101 Toolbox   (This command should work even if you have not installed the toolbox, although the soft links would not)

Alternatively:     >> help control101     will also work, but only if the toolbox is installed

MAC USER  WARNING - see end.

All the source files are also available on the following google folder if you want to download individually for personal editing and modification. A summary is given below for completeness and the links take you lower on the page where more detailed summary information is available.

Several people have developed MATLAB based materials to support the teaching of “Control Systems 101” type courses; the particular focus here is on interactive and animated resources which are largely self-explanatory, that is easy to use,  and support student understanding and learning. They demonstrate authentic scenarios across a broad range of topics which motivate the importance of control to modern society, alongside some technical learning outcomes to support university curricula.

Resources are divided into:

1. Virtual laboratories which have simple GUI interfaces so students can select buttons and sliders to observe the behaviour of some authentic scenarios and see how different parameter choices affect behaviour. Each virtual laboratory comprises two files which run independently: i) the mlapp file which is the laboratory itself and ii) a partner livescript file which acts like a concise manual giving context, illustrative MATLAB source code and some technical background.  Naming conventions are largely self-evident. For example, a typical naming convention for the paired app files is: mixingtank_and_behaviour.mlapp & mixingtank_and_behaviour_manual.mlx. These files are summarised in section 6.8. If accessing the apps via the installed toolbox and thus installed apps toolbar, the manual (mlx file) will be opened simultaneously. This link relies on correct path selection, so users who did not install the toolbox, but rather just copied all the files, will need to ensure the relevant folder is on the path.

2. Livescript files which focus more on useful MATLAB code students can use to create their own files to support detailed analysis, evaluation and design, as required for university courses. These files are  summarised in section 6.9.  If accessing the livescript files via the installed toolbox, typing the file name (as given in section 6.9) will open a livescript with the filename ending "_mycopy" in the current working directory, so the user can easily make and save any changes.

Cite As: John Anthony Rossiter (2023). Control 101 toolbox (https://github.com/jarossiter/control101ver1/releases/tag/v0.1), GitHub. Retrieved DATE. 

MAC USER  WARNING

There is a minor issue that Mathworks need to resolve which means the livescript files in the control101 toolbox do not open as expected as MACs fail to interpret the code correctly. For the time being you will need to open these files manually rather than with the shortcut provided if you really want to use a MAC. e.g.

>>open HeatExchanger_manual.mlx

>>open partial_fractions_with_matlab_toolbox.mlx        (add "_toolbox" to find the correct file name for files which are livescript only)

Don't forget to save IMMEDIATELY TO your own working directory!