AeroShield: An Open-Source Propeller-Driven Pendulum Device for Control Engineering Education

This paper introduces an open-source reference design of a miniature propeller-driven pendulum device for control engineering education. The presented design of the aeropendulum is built as a swappable and compact extension "shield" for Arduino embedded microcontroller development boards, utilizing off-the-shelf electronic components and 3D-printed mechanical parts. This fact, along with the full hardware documentation provided online, makes the lowcost replication of such hardware simple and available for public. The open-source software includes an application programming interface for Arduino IDE, MATLAB, and Simulink. In addition, typical classroom examples to demonstrate the use and the limitations of the discussed device are presented as well.