tclab_jupyter

A Jupyter-based application and library to explore different control techniques for a simple temperature plant.

Overview

This project was written to showcase the Arduino-based Temperature Control Lab for lectures on advanced control techniques: Arduino Temperature Control Lab

The TCLab system has two temperature sensors and two heaters. This package provides two notebook entrypoints:

• SimulationNotebookApp for a simulated plant, so the app can be used without hardware
• HardwareNotebookApp for a real TCLab device

The project implements four control techniques:

• Manual
• On-Off
• PID
• MPC

It also includes a configuration window where simulation and controller parameters can be adjusted while the app is running.

The interface is built with ipywidgets and bqplot. The simulated plant uses SciPy, and MPC is implemented with GEKKO. For more information on MPC options, see the GEKKO documentation.

Requirements

• Python >=3.11

Dependencies

Core package dependencies:

• numpy
• scipy
• gekko

Optional extras:

• notebook: ipywidgets, bqplot, jupyter
• hardware: tclab

Install

For notebook use with the simulated plant:

pip install "tclab-jupyter[notebook]"

For notebook use with real hardware:

pip install "tclab-jupyter[notebook,hardware]"

Usage

Simulation mode:

from tclab_jupyter.ui.notebook import SimulationNotebookApp

demo = SimulationNotebookApp()
demo.app()
demo.config()

Hardware mode:

from tclab_jupyter.ui.notebook import HardwareNotebookApp

demo = HardwareNotebookApp()
demo.app()
demo.config()

Main app window:

Configuration window:

Development

Set up the local environment with uv:

uv sync --group dev --extra notebook

If you are working with hardware too:

uv sync --group dev --extra notebook --extra hardware

Useful checks:

uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run ty check src/tclab_jupyter/runtime.py tests
uv run pytest -q