This is a project I did for my control systems class. A potentiometer acts as the input and can be turned to indicate an angle from 0 to 180 degrees. The feedback potentiometer is mechanically linked (by a worm gear) to the motor. The control board uses five operational amplifiers to create a Proportional, Derivative and Integral controller.

The feedback from the potentiometer on the motor is subtracted from the input voltage to provide the proportional signal. The derivative and the integral of that signal is taken for the derivative and integral signals. Each of these signals is amplified and summed to create the output signal for the motor. Before it can be fed to the motor, the signal goes through a push-pull power amplifier to drive the motor since the op amp alone cannot provide enough current.

The whole setup was mounted on a Plexiglas sheet so that the output could be projected on an overhead projector. I connected a dowel on the end of the motor to point in the direction of the output. The motor gears and mounting I used were all taken from my old Lego Mindstorm kit. Two switches on the board allow you to disable the derivative and/or integral feedback to see the change in response. Each signal has an adjustable gain via a trimpot, to change the pole and zero locations of the system. The system is powered by two nine volt batteries two provide +/-9V for the opamps. In the end, this worked very well, just like the theory suggests! I was able to do things like increase the gain to move the system into an unstable region and it would begin oscillating out of control!