New Industry Products

Motor Control Software Development Kit for High-Performance Drives

April 05, 2018 by Paul Shepard

STM32 microcontrollers from STMicroelectronics offer the performance of the industry-standard Arm® Cortex®-M cores running either Vector control or FOC modes, widely used in high-performance drives for air conditioning, home appliances, drones, building and industrial automation, medical and e-bike applications.

STM32 MC SDK (motor control software development kit) firmware (X-CUBE-MCSDK and X-CUBE-MCSDK-FUL) includes the Permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) firmware library (FOC control) and the STM32 Motor Control Workbench (to configure the FOC firmware library parameters), with its graphical user interface (GUI).

STM32 Motor Control Workbench is PC software that reduces the design effort and time needed for the STM32 PMSM FOC firmware configuration.

The user generates a project file through the GUI, and initializes the library according to the application needs. Some of the variables of the algorithm being used can be monitored and changed in real time.

Key features include:

  • Single/Dual simultaneous field-oriented control (FOC)
  • Motor profiler and One-touch tuning for a fast startup of unknown motors
  • Simplified firmware architecture based on the STM32Cube HAL/LL libraries
  • Current reading topologies supported:
    • 1 shunt resistor
    • 3 shunt resistors
    • 2 ICS (Isolated Current Sensor)
  • Speed/position sensors (Encoder and Hall) as well as sensor-less operation (state observer) supported
  • On-the-fly startup for fans
  • Speed and torque control
  • Motor control algorithms implemented for specific applications, among them MTPA (maximum torque per ampere), Flux weakening, Feed forward and Start-on-the-fly
  • Full customization and real time communication through STM32 Motor Control Workbench PC software
    • New project creation starting from the board
    • Workflow supporting the STM32CubeMX GUI configurator
    • Wide range of STM32 microcontrollers supported