⁴⁰Many instrument manufacturers sell simple, single-loop controllers for reasonable prices, comparable to the price of a college textbook. You need to get one that accepts 1-5 VDC input signals and generates 4-20 mA output signals, and has a “manual” mode of operation in addition to automatic – these features are very important! Avoid controllers that can only accept thermocouple inputs, and/or only have time-proportioning (PWM) outputs. Additionally, I strongly recommend you take the time to experimentally learn the actions of proportional, integral, and derivative as outlined in section 29.16 beginning on page 3949 before you embark on any PID tuning exercises.