This is the documentation and instruction manual site for the Ball & Beam kit designed by Ian Carey. On this site you will find all of the supporting documentation for the project as well as the full instruction manual.

Background

Ian has a long history with this machine which started back in 2010 when he attempted to build one for his final year project in university. Ian studied electronic engineering and as part of this spent a lot of time learning about signals and systems with a major focus on control theory. This was a field so fascinating to Ian that he decided to do his final year project on it. Specifically, the brief for the project was to create a something to use as a tool for teaching control theory in a classroom and design experiments to be performed with the machine.

For this project, Ian choose to build a ball & beam machine however, unfortunately, it never worked properly! Ian put so much work into it and was always disappointed that it never worked properly and so he failed to meet the full brief of designing experiments that could be done with it. Fast forward ten years and this machine now represents the third iteration of this kind of machine that Ian has made. Designing and building working versions of this machine and now also providing it as a kit with accompanying experiments is something of a redemption in Ian’s eyes and he is delighted to share it with the world!

It is Ian’s hope that this kit can provide a good introduction to control theory, electronics and programming for the keen hobbyist as well as an experimental framework for students studying the topic.

About the Creator

Ian Carey is a professional software engineer with a decade of experience writing software in Dublin’s busy tech industry. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, Ian rekindled his love of making things with his hands and got back into many things he hadn’t touched since his college days. Ian is now an avid maker and spends most of his spare time building robots with 3d printing.

You can find more of Ian’s work on his website.