When I'm not doing fun projects on Hackaday.io, I work as an RF Engineer for a large communications company. My role transitions between R&D and new product development as is needed, but I work with the same core group of engineers and they've come to know the types of things I make in my free time. When I competed in the 2013 Sparkfun AVC (and took 3rd place in the PBR class!) I held monthly lunch time talks where I would reserve a conference room and invite all the other engineers I work with. Lunch time talks were great because I had lots of people interested in hearing about my rover development but not enough time to tell people individually. After the AVC was done I wanted to keep up with my lunchtime talks. So once every 2 or 3 months I’ll bring in a project that I’m working on and use it as an opportunity to introduce some tech that I’m playing with that they may not be familiar with. I usually spend about half the time showing off what I’ve made and the other half giving a crash course on what I had to learn to do it. I’ve talked about RC servos, ultrasonic distance sensing, quadcopters, SLAM (simultaneous location and mapping), my laser cutter, 3D printing, Google cardboard, a hobby radio I made, raspberry pi, and most recently SAB3T.

I started off with a crash course on PID loops then demonstrated the operation of SAB3T with different loop parameters. I made a live graphing python script that I put on the conference room projector. That really helps in understanding what is going on.

It turns out that one of my coworkers had previously worked at a company developing inkjet printers and had a lot more experience and knowledge on PID loops than I. He clarified a few things and shared some interesting war stories about tuning inkjet printers. Everyone else was familiar with the term, but wasn’t familiar enough to remember what the acronym stands for. Regardless of how well you understand what is going on behind the scenes, it is fascinating to watch SAB3T at work. Balancing the ball bearing on the touch screen and moving it between several preprogrammed positions is mesmerizing.

After my talk I kept SAB3T on my desk for a few weeks. As people walk by they push the bearing and see how SAB3T reacts, and the bearing is rarely dropped. I also met several random people who stopped to talk, wondering what this thing was on my desk. The president of the company even stopped by to see it!

One of the key takeaways I have from that lunch time talk is that even in a room filled with professional engineers, PID loops are barely understood. But it’s not just PIDs, there is a need for entertaining teach aids that can be easily acquired by anyone. The best learning is when it is a byproduct of doing something interesting. For me I hope SAB3T is the first of many educational kits that I can bring to market.