Sorry, NJ. But there's a lot of inaccuracies in this video. Brace for the text wall: 5:10 - You shouldn't clamp the value while you're tuning the PID. Clamping is something you'd do after you're done, in order to mitigate unwanted effects, such as (for instance) the engine turning off when throttling down quickly. Clamping before tuning the PID will just make your tuning inaccurate, as the output will change for every situation that you tested before. In most cases you will NOT need a clamp to get the PID working the way you want it. 6:55 - You can actually just calculate the base P value beforehand by doing simple maths... (desired maximum output divided by the maximum difference between set point and variable). There's no need to guess the rough number, that just bad practice and a huge waste of time. And once you get your base number figured out in, you can fine-tune by decreasing or increasing the number. Starting with 0.1 is just bad advice, since that number depends on three variables above, these are >different for each application

My thoughts when i first saw the vid: "great now i have to tune my engines not just in real life but now in a game to" lol

Correct title: "How to break perfectly fine proportional controller". Most of overshooting in your control system could have been avoided if you used cascade controller, as in your current setu you are controlling second derivative of your control variable which means that when you have large errors the integrator winds up and can keep output saturated even after error crosses 0. The best way to compensate for helicopters pitch and roll is to divide the collective by sin of value of vertical tilt sensor converted to radians. This lets the controller control vertical component of thrust. A better way of controlling altitude would be to use PID+ (feed forward) to control vertical velocity and simple clamped proportional controller for altitude driving vertical velocity component. Feed forward is optional but can make PID's work easier.

This is amazing! This is exactly what I need to get my creations going. This will be especially useful for me in tuning engines for constant rpm and for self leveling on boats.

I heard you struggling to pronounce derivative, try it like this "der" "iv" "it" "iv" just pronounce those seperately and see if you can start putting some together. hope you see this Edit: thanks for the like, all of them help NJ see it

Im new to stormworks and all your tutorial's have been really useful thankyou :)

Man, that's what i searched for 2 years! You're good!

Very helpful. I’m still a baby at things like heli because of this thing. I like the RD but sometimes I just don’t have time to understand it fully. Thanks for the visual representation and explanation

This would be an awesome add to engine rooms on ships and other vehicles. Awesome video, thanks for the work.

Great video and a great tool to tune PIDs. One thing: The I-Term is not used to make the system react quicker, it is there to remove steady state errors. Imagine a jet engine controlled by a PID. With P-term alone it would never reach its set RPS, because the throttle output would be 0 if the RPS reach the setpoint. The I-term integrates (adds up) the error for each calculation cycle, so it gets bigger and bigger as long as there is a remaining error. Once the RPS reaches the setpoint, the I-term stays at its value. Or if RPS overshoot the setpoint, it gets smaller again. The I-term in Stormworks is difficult to use, because there is no I-term limit implemented. This has destroyed systems in real life. In Stormworks it may lead to unwanted behaviour, if the PID is active before there is something to control. The I-term will wind up and make it impossible for the PID controller to work.

your tutorials are so helpful to me. I don't follow them, and most of the time the thing I am trying to do isn't even the thing in the tutorial I have playing, but somehow just having ur videos playing as background noise makes me better at figuring out how to achieve something within microcontrollers. IDK if its a placebo effect or smt but if it works, it works, and I won't complain

Linking the microcontroller on the workshop would be helpful.

very useful. I love things like this.

Oooh man! Thank you so much!

Best game ever, thanks a ton for your videos.

I guess I got the notification 31 minutes late Thank you by the way pids are a struggle for me

I think I would explain it slightly differently. Yes, you start with the P term. In your case, it seems that the P term was doing all right pretty early. It simply says how to respond to differences between set point and measurement. In your example you had a throttle of range 0-1 that was to control an altitude. Let's for argument sake say that a 0.15 thrust was required for steady hover. The thing is that with a P term of 0.1, you would need to stay 1.5 meter below the desired altitude in order for the P term to yield the required 0.15 thrust. That may sound totally acceptable. But then let's consider a winching operation where a 0.8 thrust was required in order to maintain an altitude (or moving the helicopter forward). In order to make a yield of 0.8 to happen with a P term of 0.1, you'd need to stay 8 meters below the desired altitude. That is obviously not desirable. Think of the P term as a RUBBER BAND. It is useful, yes, but insufficient. The 1.5 meters and 8 meters mentioned above are called steady state errors. In order to eliminate these, we have the I term. This term will consider your measurement error over time and apply a correction. Let us consider the P term of 0.1 and set point of 45 meters and the helicopter altitude at 43.5. The P term would be yielding 0.15 thrust, which would make the helicopter hover in place, but still below the desired altitude. Now let us consider an I term of 0.01. This would take the 1.5 meter correction and decide to add a 0.015 correction. Let's for simplicity sake say that this didn't affect the helicopter at all, but at the the next "tick" it will add ANOTHER 0.015, increasing it to 0.030. This will continue happening as long as the helicopter stays under the set point. If the helicopter comes above 45, it will subtract a small amount. This will go on and on until the helicopter rests at the 45 meters. The error will be zero, causing the P term to yield 0, but the I term will stay steady at 0.15, not subtracting or adding anything. This sounds perfect, but there is a problem. If you are at ground level and set an altitude of 45, then the P term at 0.1 will yield 4.5 (which is more than max throttle). The I term at 0.01 will every single tick add 0.45, quickly accummulating up well above 20, especially if it is a heavy helicopter, and this will will not start to drop until the helicopter is above 45 meters. We have an "Integral wind up" causing an overshoot. It would be even worse if the "hold altitude" was active but the engine switched off. The I term can accummulate into the thousands rendering the controller totally useless until it has spent sufficient time above the set altitude to "bleed out" the accumulated value. Therefore it is important that the controller is only active when there is a connection between the PID output (throttle) and the process variable (altitude). More advanced controllers have clamps on the accummulator to avoid this effect. But for a normal scenario, a helicopter starting at ground level with a desired altitude of 45 meters will start heading for it very fast. The P value is contributing and the I value is accummulating and growing bigger and bigger since the I accummulator is increasing and increasing. The final ingredient is the D term. This is the brake. It your altitude was 15 meters and the next tick is measured at 15.2, then this says that the current rate of change is 0.2 meters for every tick. This is pretty fast. So the D term set to 0.01 will decide to reduce the throttle by 0.002 just because you are rising. All these effects adding together: P (the rubber band) + I (the running accountancy of all previous errors) + D (the rate-of-change brake) will hopefully yield a sensible value of 0-1 for throttle.

Ahem. P is for causing a reaction based on the error. D is for dampening the overshoots: if you are already going in the direction that reduces the error, you need to react less than if you are going the other way. I is to remove residual errors. Imagine your helicopter is set to 250m height. Your heli goes to 230m, the error of 20m does not give enough via P to get to 250m, it is just enough for 230m ... With I the residual error accumulates. As you go -20, -20, -20, -20, -20, these errors add up and I increases, pushing the helicopter to reach 250m... and it will keep it around there, even if you take on more load or drop the same.

This machine helped me alot. Its way easier and faster to stabilize a pid. I wouldnt get my vehicle to fly today if it wasnt for this.

I wish I had learned PIDs when I was much newer in the game. I STILL haven't used one I didn't download but this video gives me such a better understanding I'll have a go at it

please post to the workshop. This is soo helpful (Just like all these tutorial/guide videos of yours)! Thanks for the great content!

Sooo this guide is best bcs it helps me to tune pid in my irl 3d printer

Nice video! 👌

I don't even own the game yet but these videos are great!

This would be very helpful to get from the workshop

Mr. NJ you legend (:

How is using a bigger engine at reduced pitch authority a better solution than tuning the PID better? Also, quite sure that the explanation for the integral is not right. As i understand it, the I part of the controller looks at the error between the setpoint and the variable and accumulates it in order to get it to zero. This can go very wrong very quickly, as any jump in the setpoint or in the variable will run up the I result. That is why we usually have very low factors for I, otherwise it will screw things up. Most creations should be ok without any I factor, as long as a small constant error (like a slightly incorrect altitude) does not matter.

can we have the link for the LUA screen and microcontroller

Connect the clamp to a tilt sensor if it’s above a servers degree increase max clamp

This controller/display setup is perfect for a PID I'm trying to get working right for a diesel-electric engine manager (which adjusts throttle based on battery charge decay rate.) Looking forward to tinkering with it!

The nature of a PID is, that when setpoint and input-value are the same (for a long time) the output is zero. That's not what the collective of the helicopter should be to hold the altitude. So you cannot reach the exact altitude with this kind of pid-construction. For the altitude autopilot of a helicopter it's not the problem, because the error is only a couple of cm but for other systems this wouldn't work this way.

For giving the heli more power when moving forward, you could set up some logic that automatically changes the max for the pid while it is moving forward

YEEEEEES!

Hey! What changes should I make to the system if I have a linear track based sliding weight in the bottom of my big ship? That doesn't work the same as a helicopter...

i have the variable hooked up to a tilt sensor and the graph isn't showing anything, the blue line is just flat

THE D VALUE

i don't use PIDs anymore, the one big reason for that is that you can't give them min or max limits. sure you could clamp the output, but if you had a long drive with your boat on full power and want to stop, the pid has to come down from a huge value and instead of stopping you continue 5 more minutes with full throttle...

Jet Engine: BRRRRRRRRRRRRR .........BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..... BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Def need this. Thanks!

And I wud love if it wud be on the worship!

im trying to use a pid on my modular engine to set my throttle setting to the rps i want but i cant get it to work

Big Brain math moment.

How you do tune it for ballast where the setpoint is to be zero at all time???

I basically made a PID without knowing it. I made a cruise control system on my vehicle and it behaves very similar to a PID.

Cool.

This graph is actually a life saver. Is it on the workshop?

Finaly

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hi

That's the best in Stormworks.. its more than just a game...

Will please make an updated (1.0+) medium ship gyro configuration tutorial? 🙏 Please. I can't sent u my problem ship if need

I think you might have I and D mixed up. I might be mixed up.

yay ^v^

How to click more than one time on 'like' ? ;-)

D-E-R-I-V-A-T-I-V-E

my alt hold and hdg hold and att hold is made with tilt and compass and altimeter sensors then set point, the amount of difference with the set point is the source for controlling the potential direction. i would never trust a pid controller doing that.

First time

3d

Thats cool and all but this tells me nothing of how to tune it for a ship. I understand how it works technically, but it still makes no sense to me at all and it just pure guessing. The pid seems to just do what it wants relative to the inputs I give it. I've built plenty of ships with the a pid and rail stabilizer that are very steady from setting them 10-0-10000, hull design and randomly changing the amount of weight. I've come to about my 7th ship and it will not for the life of me sit still.

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

reeeeeeee

Wud

I got banned for your server, can you unban me?

Low point in NJ's vids. Remember, man can't pronounce 'DER-IV-AT-IV' man can't explain PIDs worth a crap.