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Showing posts from February, 2013

Fix Pithos not playing an not showing any error

So for some reason my Pithos wasn't working for the past two weeks, it would simply open and not load any songs, show a blank window, and not give any errors. This is how I *fixed* it: 1. Remove it and purge all user settings sudo apt-get purge pithos 2. Reinstall sudo apt-get install pithos And wala! I'm not sure why, but it worked!

Control Systems in Python - Part 2 - Routh Hurwitz

In my last post Control Systems in Python Part 1 , i described how to setup and use Python for doing some basic plotting of transfer functions. One of the biggest benefits of using sympy vs numeric packages like matlab/numpy/scipy is the fact that you can use symbolic variables. This post includes a function for computing the Routh Hurwitz table (Note: It does not work for row's of zeros). Lets do my control systems design homework problem together :) (Warning: I have not verified if this answer is right so please correct me if it’s not!) The Problem The problem is DP 9.11 from Dorf & Bishop’s Modern Control Systems. ISBN 0136024580. Basically we have to design a controller to compensate for a system with a time delay. The controller is: And the system is: First we approximate the exponential term with a 2nd order polynomial using pade(0.4,2) such that: Thus the approximated system is: Using frequency response methods, design the controller so that th

Control Systems in Python - Part 1 - Bode and Step Response

I hate matlab with passion, yet sadly, nearly everyone uses it.  I'm a fan of Python and open source stuff so here's a simple article on how to do some common control systems stuff in Python. First we need to make sure the environment is setup. Install IPython (or you can use any other python shell, but a unicode supported shell is preferred) Install python-control (numpy, scipy) Install sympy These should do if your on Ubuntu/debian: sudo apt - get install python - sympy python-numpy python-scipy python-matplotlib ipython Then you need to install python control, see How to download and install python-control Intro to using Sympy Open ipython and run the following: import sympy from sympy import * sympy.init_printing() s = Symbol('s') Now we can do things like define transfer functions using the symbolic variable s. We can expand the bottom using the .simplify() method and we can do something more complex like... which is really nice because it