Motor control software development kit jump-starts new designs

C2000™ microcontrollers (MCUs) have been used to control motors in a huge variety of applications for over 25 years. These motors are primarily three-phase synchronous or asynchronous, and typically controlled using a technique called field-oriented control (FOC) to minimize power usage by providing efficient torque production. They are used in products ranging from sub-100-W medical tools up to hundreds of kilowatts industrial machinery. Some applications require only torque control, others a stable velocity, and still others very precise position control. Such disparate requirements require varied solutions, which TI has provided over the years through its digital motor control library, controlSUITE™ library and most recently MotorWare™ library.

Starting today, we are unifying our latest motor-control developments with device-level software drivers into a single product: the C2000Ware MotorControl software development kit (SDK).

This SDK supports the latest generation-compatible TMS320F28379D, TMS320F28076 and TMS320F280049C series in the C2000 platform, as well as all new series going forward. Components of the SDK include:

• C2000Ware: device-specific drivers, bit fields, libraries (math, digital signal processing, control, signal generation), peripheral examples, utilities, hardware files and documentation – everything required for customizing the rest of your application around TI motor control solutions.
• Motor control library: common control and motor control specific functions that you can use as building blocks in a fully customized motor-control application.
• Hardware files and documentation.
• InstaSPIN-FOC™ solutions: sensorless FOC solutions that use TI’s FAST™ software encoder for premium performance. Motor identification and automatic current-loop tuning enable rapid development, even for those with limited motor control experience.
• DesignDRIVE solutions: sensored FOC solutions that use TI’s DesignDRIVE components to enable experimentation with multiple current-sense topologies, analog and digital position sensor interfaces, control techniques, and flexible real-time connectivity. Fast current loop (FCL) is a unique, optimized software library that takes advantage of all hardware features, accelerators and cycle-scavenging techniques. The ability to implement the entire FOC torque control loop in less than 1 µs enables higher-frequency torque control and thus higher-frequency position control, resulting in servo drives with premium performance.

The InstaSPIN-FOC solution (fig 1) was released in 2013 and is enabled by an on-chip read-only memory (ROM) library on the F2806x, F2805x and F2802x series through the MotorWare software package. The library has been rewritten into floating point – removing the fixed-point scaling burden and taking advantage of on-chip accelerators – and updated in on-chip ROM for the F28004x series. Library function calls and step-by-step lab projects will look familiar to InstaSPIN-FOC users. TI has also released a new BoosterPack™ plug in module to work specifically for InstaSPIN-FOC solution with our C2000 Piccolo™ MCU F280049C LaunchPad™ development kit.

Figure 1: InstaSPIN-FOC features

DesignDRIVE (fig 2) was released in - and has been routinely updated through - controlSUITE software suite. With its inclusion in the MotorControl SDK, we are now able to add support for C2000Ware. This gives a more complete and user-friendly software experience and enables easier porting of DesignDRIVE onto other C2000 MCU series.

Figure 2: DesignDRIVE components

This first release of the MotorControl SDK includes the support shown in Table 1.

Table 1: MotorControl SDK support

TI will update the MotorControl SDK quarterly or biannually, and in future releases plans to support:

• InstaSPIN-FOC labs running entirely on the F28004x control law accelerator (CLA) co-processor.
• InstaSPIN-FOC support for asynchronous induction motors.
• DesignDRIVE examples for the F28004x series.
• Enhanced DesignDRIVE FCL examples, including absolute encoder feedback techniques.
• Combined real-time connectivity.

Additional resources

• Get started by downloading the C2000Ware MotorControl SDK and reading through the documentation.
• Check out the C2000 DesignDRIVE development kit for industrial motor control.
• Ask a question in the TI E2E™ Community C2000 microcontrollers forum.
• Read more about C2000 real-time control MCUs for motor control.
• Download the “C2000 MCU DesignDRIVE Solutions for Industrial Motor Drives” e-book.