New high-quality development kits offer motor-control capability

RS Components has a new motor-control kit solution from Cypress Semiconductor that enable the simple design, configuration and evaluation of advanced DC motor-control solutions. Covering a range of motors including BLDC (Brushless Direct Current) motors, PMSM (Permanent Magnetic Synchronous Motors) and stepper motors, the new Cypress CY8CKIT-037 PSoC 4 Microcontroller Motor Control Evaluation Kit has been designed for use with the Cypress CY8CKIT-042 PSoC 4 MCU Pioneer Kit. PSoC is Cypress’ programmable microcontroller that is based on the ARM Cortex-M processor and integrates configurable analogue and digital peripheral functions on a single chip. Making it easy to prototype four different BLDC motor-control techniques, the kit supports several operating modes including single-shunt and sensor-less FOC, sensored or sensor-less BLDC-motor control, as well as stepper motor control. The evaluation kit comprises: motor-control board; 24V/2A power supply adapter; screwdriver; BLDC motor with sinusoidal back-EMF; type-A to mini-B USB cable; configuration jumpers; 2.5A fuse; and a quick start guide. The PSoC 4 Pioneer kit comprises of the Pioneer PSoC board, USB standard type-A to mini-B cable; jumper wires; and a quick start guide. Enabling development costs to be reduced, the kit offers the most integrated BLDC motor-control solution: for example, the PSoC 4 MCU integrates the op amps and ADC to interface with the motor and implements the control loop in hardware, using the programmable fabric of the UDBs, enabling deterministic control of the motor. Additionally, it provides several code examples to demonstrate the control of BLDC, PMSM and stepper motors. The kit also enables the simplified design of advanced motor-control systems, as it provides the advanced FOC algorithm, reliable 5V design without external components, and hardware-based commutation using high-reliability programmable hardware to offload CPU computation. In addition, use of Cypress’ PSoC Creator IDE allows concurrent hardware and software design.