New Industry Products

Texas Instruments Announces Piccolo MCU Motor Control Kits With Power Factor Correction

June 25, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announced two new Piccolo Motor Control Kits that enable Power Factor Correction (PFC) and sensorless field-oriented control of up to two motors with a single low-cost microcontroller (MCU). Leveraging TI’s Piccolo MCUs and high-performance analog, the kits are said to include everything needed to immediately begin development of cost-sensitive motor control applications such as pumps, HVAC, refrigerators and other appliances/white goods.

These controlCARD-based kits include a Piccolo controlCARD, Code Composer Studio™ IDE, software libraries and a hardware designer’s package. The Motor Control and PFC Developer’s Kit includes a single permanent magnet motor while the Dual Motor Control and PFC Developer’s Kit includes two.

Key features and benefits of the Piccolo MCU Motor Control and PFC Developer’s Kits include: single 60MHz TMS320F28035 MCU features 128KB flash and control-oriented peripherals such as 12-bit, 16 channel on chip ADC and high resolution PWM outputs; sensorless field-oriented software tuned for kits’ motors allows developers to easily begin design right out of the box; software is broken into incremental builds for easy, step by step learning and development of motor control plus PFC on Piccolo MCUs; dual full bridge PWM motor drivers include programmable cycle-by-cycle current limit and two stage thermal protection capabilities; isolated onboard USB JTAG emulation saves on cost by eliminating the need for an external JTAG emulator; and detailed documentation of field-oriented motor control theory and PFC principles, including instructions for executing both with one Piccolo MCU.

The Motor Control and PFC Developer’s Kit (™DS1MTRPFCKIT) is priced at $369 and the Dual Motor Control and PFC Developer’s Kit (™DS2MTRPFCKIT) is priced at $399. Both kits are now in stock and immediately available to order.