About this course

Introduction and Background:

MATLAB is the most popular software for numerical computation in the fields of mathematics, control systems, statistics, signal processing and other science fields in general. However, there are some free alternatives available for scientific research community and Scilab is at the top of that list.  Scilab is an open source, cross-platform numerical computational software and also a high-level, numerically oriented programming language.  For MATLAB user, it also has a built-in MATLAB translator which can help them in smooth transition from MATLAB to Scilab. Scilab is fully compatible with Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms. This course however, only uses Scilab in Windows 10 environment.

Who should take this course and why:

This course is designed for beginners and I am confident that you will become an intermediate level expert in the use of Scilab. This course will be a pre-requisite for my future advanced courses on Scilab. Therefore, it is a good opportunity for my students to get familiar with the software if you are really planning to use this software for future research or educational career.

Why this is a Beginner to Intermediate Course:

I wanted to separate this course from my advanced course because I don’t want to waste time on little things during my next advanced course. If you are looking for an advanced course, this is not for you, I would be putting one in about six months’ time.

The course also includes some basic lecturing on Matrices because without understanding matrices and their properties, no one can benefit from Scilab. If you already know these topics, you may forward those videos because you will not be missing much Scilab commands in those videos.  Also, when I explain control system concepts, I also try to touch the subject just a little bit to shed some light on what the concepts behind the commands are.

Video Index on Some Videos:

In some of the videos, I have included a video content index which will be played during the first 5 seconds of that video. You can stop it and look at what commands or topic are covered in that video.

Target Audience:

1. Anyone interested in learning Scilab from the start.

2. Research academic staff and students who are fan of opensource software like myself.

3. MATLAB users who want to switch to a free opensource software.

What you will learn in this first course:

1.      Matrix and basic matrix operations of addition and multiplication. (Mostly Theory)

2.      Determinants of 2 X 2 and 3X3 matrices. (Mostly Theory)

3.      Special Matrices

4.      Introduction to Scilab environment

5.      Scilab datatypes, variables and constants

6.      Plotting math functions in Scilab

7.      Changing axes properties in scilab plots

8.      Plotting Bar graphs in Scilab

9.      Putting Latex formatted text and math symbols in Scilab plots

10.  Solving linear algebraic equations in Scilab

11. Introduction to two main representations of a control system models.

12. Three ways to make a polynomial in Scilab.

13. Building Transfer Function of a Control System

14. How to plot the step response of a control system.

15. Plotting Root Locus of a Control System.

16. From Transfer Function to State Space.

17. From State Space to Transfer Function.

18. Introduction to Xcos: The Scilab simulator (Similar to Simulink in MATLAB)

19. Writing your own functions in Scilab.