Latest processors and software simplify motor control

Today, design engineers using small or medium-sized motors can move to MCU control and integrated drive transistors for improved efficiency, reliability, and controllability without much additional cost in either BOM or design time. New chips and tools make it much easier now than it was just a few years ago. There are at least a dozen semiconductor manufacturers with motor control solutions. I have to stick to just three.
One example is from Freescale: the company's new Cortex-M4-based MCU, the Kinetis KV3 series. It hits the spot with two fast 16-bit A/D converters, enhanced timers and PWM generators, and 100/120-MHz clock speeds targeting BLDC, PMSM, and ACIM motor control. It has DSP and floating point capability, 64 to 512 Kbytes of flash, a hardware CRC module, a 128-bit unique ID number, and flash access control security. The MCU starts at just $1.59 ea/10,000.
But the bigger story from Freescale may be the new, easy-to-use Kinetis motor suite which reduces development time and cost for every type of design and designer.
Texas Instrument’s Chris Clearman is an expert in the area of motor control. He recently noted to me that brush-type dc motors are very reliable these days, though they do produce a lot of electrical noise. Second, Chris notes that 24-V BLDC motors are now not much more expensive, in quantity, than the brush type, and their drive transistors and controllers are much easier to design. TI offers excellent motor control predrivers such as the DRV10866 with six 680-mA peak MOSFETS, a proprietary BMEF control scheme, and lock detection in a small 10WSON package that costs just $0.39 ea/1,000.

TI also offers its new and InstaSPIN-FOC field-oriented-control sensorless motor control algorithms (http://tinyurl.com/qfonj2f) that targets real-time control using C2000 Piccolo F2802x MCUs. Engineers can load InstaSPIN from ROM to speed system design and improve efficiency in BLDC, PMSM, and ac induction motor applications.
Lastly, Zilog’s Z16FMC MCU-based MultiMotor Series development kit (ZMULTIMC100ZCOG) is a complete platform using an advanced ZNEO 16-bit CPU core, which is optimized for motor control applications. The kits MCU module is connected to a three-phase development board. A 24-Vdc/3,200-rpm three-phase motor is included with the kit. Several motor types are supported, including BLDC, PMSM, and ACIM, with control algorithms including sensored, sensorless, trapezoidal, sinusoidal, and vector.