PID Auto Tune

[Damian]

Why wasn't the number of stages allowed to be assigned a variable?

[Emil]

Hi Damian,

The choice of stages is 1, 2 or 3 - not so big choice. Usually Autotune is preformed onece in a life, when you debug/tune your system. I understand there are anyway situations, when exchanging the value of one MI can be easier than download relevant DLU. But, based on my experience, in 99.5% of the cases the people will mess, will put illegal value there and then will ask need to understand why it doesn't work?...

[Damian]

Hi Damian,

The choice of stages is 1, 2 or 3 - not so big choice. Usually Autotune is preformed onece in a life, when you debug/tune your system. I understand there are anyway situations, when exchanging the value of one MI can be easier than download relevant DLU. But, based on my experience, in 99.5% of the cases the people will mess, will put illegal value there and then will ask need to understand why it doesn't work?...

Hi Emil,

In my case I need to develop a universal multizone (up to 16 zones) temperature controller which will utlize the same program for many different machines and process's. If it would have been variable, I could have assigned it an MI for all 16 zones, and simply changed the value in the configuration database to set the number of stages. Now, If I choose to have the number of stages variable, I have to declare 48 different Auto Tune blocks with with a bunch of comparators to achieve the same thing. This coupled with the fact that I can not set through the program the type of thermocouple used makes what could have otherwise been a very solid universal program a lot messier. PLEASE Unitronics, do not try to protect us from ourselves. This is automation, not kids toys.