[Scilab-users] Confusion between Scilab and Scicoslab

[Tim Wescott]

Answers embedded with questions.

On Thu, 2016-03-03 at 15:48 +0100, Pradeep Pradeep wrote:
> Dear Sir/Madam,
> 
> 
> My name Pradeep Adusumilli. I am a master student at University of
> stuttgart. I am looking for a open source control system design tool
> for my project. so i have come across this tool called Scilab/Xcos and
> Scicoslab. Initially i am very confused between these tools. After i
> downloaded i came to know both environments are different but both
> have same common features. So i want to clear my confusions with my
> questions
> 
> 
> 1) Is Scilab and Scicoslab are the same?
> 
No.  They are different applications, both based on Scilab 4.  

This part is subject to correction, but Scilab moved from using Tcl to
using Java for it's graphics and GUI.  The folks now doing Scicoslab
felt that it would be better to stick with Tcl, and did.
> 
> 2) i have seen both can implement control designs. As far i checked
> with Xcos and Scicos i can see both  can implement conventional PID
> controller and state space controllers like LQR, kalman filter etc.Can
> it implement other controller like Model predictive controller and
> Fuzzy controller? If so can you please provide me some references?
> 
Scilab is a general purpose computing platform and can do anything you
want.

<rant>

I gather from your question that what you really mean is "are there
toolboxes to do MPC and fuzzy controllers?"

I don't know the answer to that.  The reason is that I don't care.  If I
need a toolbox to do MPC or fuzzy control or whatever, then I don't know
what the hell I'm doing, and I won't be able to move that controller to
the real world without learning it.  Using a toolbox gets in the way of
learning that stuff, so why would I want one?

The alternative way of thinking about this is "oh, I'll just use a
toolbox full of stuff I don't understand and then I'll convert
everything into C code with a converter".  That's an excellent way to
crash planes, disable factories, etc.

I do use bits and bobs of the "toolboxes" that come with Scilab --
generally after I've assured myself that I understand how to do that job
myself, and either looking at the code myself or doing extensive testing
to make sure that I understand what the code is doing.

</rant>
> 
> 3) I know both can make an interface to C and Fortran coding. My
> question is it possible to interface with MATLAB/Simulink.
> 
Probably not without great difficulty.  I don't think there would be a
great impetus to do so at anything finer-grained than processing a data
file generated by one with a pre-existing application in the other.

Scilab is a different species of animal than Matlab, but they're in the
same genus (in fact, they share a common ancestor).  However, code for
Scilab won't work in Matlab, and visa-versa.

In theory you could probably pipe data from one program to another, but
I can't imagine why you'd want to.
> 
> 4) Is it possible to estimate calculation duration in this environment
> like in matlab it shows simulation took 0.983 sec of cpu time? because
> i would like to know the performance.
> 
Yes.  "tic()" sets a stopwatch timer to zero, "toc()" reads the current
value.  So you write:

tic()

<code to be timed>

t = toc();

mprintf("execution time = %f\n", t);

and you find out how long things took.
> 
> 
> 
> Your help means a lot to me. Thanks for your support in advance.
> Awaiting your reply.....
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Pradeep Adusumilli
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 

Tim Wescott
www.wescottdesign.com
Control & Communications systems, circuit & software design.
Phone: 503.631.7815
Cell:  503.349.8432