System design and implementation to control an industrial process through a microcontroller and LabVIEW

The purpose of this paper is to present how a self-controlled automatic system determines the flow of liquids from a numeric value requested by a user. It shows an arrangement of valves, sensors, pump, controllers and voltage supplies integrated on a self-controlled system acting with precision by using a PID control. The LabVIEW's interface allows the operator to start the pump and control the amount of flow either manually or automatically. In addition, the liquid level can be verified in real time by using a library installed and loaded in both, the microcontroller and LabVIEW. The idea is to perform centralized control, so that later more computational units (not necessarily Arduinos) can be added to the system, so Arduino was chosen to demonstrate that this methodology can be applied for low-computational power devices. Since the system works with minimum error, all electrical signals had to be free from noise, as well as the usage of voltage convertors and supplies calculated specifically for this equipment. The automatic system aforementioned can be applied to the industrial field since it has the precision and stability required. It is, robust enough for industrial applications. Also it is fast enough for systems with high inertia (e.g. coupled tanks).