In third-generation synchrotron radiation sources, such as the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the sensitivity and reliability requirements for the x-ray beam position monitors (XBPMs) are much higher than for earlier systems. Noise and contamination signals caused by radiation emitted from the bending magnet become a major problem. The regular XBPM calibration process can only provide signal correction for one set of conditions for the insertion devices (ID). During normal operation, parameters affecting the ID-emitted beam, such as the gap of the ID magnets and the beam current, are the variables. A new smart x-ray beam position monitor system (SBPM) has been conceived and designed for the APS. It has a built in self-learning structure with EEPROM memory that is large enough to ‘‘remember’’ a complete set of calibration data covering all the possible operating conditions. During the self-learning mode, the monitor system initializes a series of automatic scan motions with information for different ID setups and records them into the database array. During normal operation, the SBPM corrects the normalized output according to the ID setup information and the calibration database. So that, with this novel system, the SBPM is always calibrating itself with the changing ID set up conditions.