Design Automation


Motor control development kit

23 November 2011 Design Automation

New from Microchip is a development kit for embedded motor control designs based on the Microchip dsPIC33 digital signal controller (DSC). The Digilent Cerebot MC7 development kit addresses the growing interest in embedded motor control from the academic and hobbyist markets.

The kit includes a demonstration board that provides four


half-bridge circuits, eight RC servo motor connectors, the ability to use Digilent Pmod peripheral modules, and an integrated programming/debugging circuit that is compatible with Microchip’s free MPLAB IDE. Example applications include university classes in embedded systems and communications, final-year student projects and a wide range of other academic and hobbyist projects, including advanced robotics.

The four half-bridge circuits in the Cerebot MC7 board are rated for 24 V at up to 5 A. These half bridges can be used to control two brushed DC motors, two bipolar stepper motors, one brushless DC motor and one unipolar stepper motor. An onboard 5 V, 4 A switching regulator, with an input voltage of up to 24 V, simplifies operation of the board, enabling it to operate from a single power supply in embedded applications such as robotics. The board combines two pushbuttons and four LEDs for user I/O, as well as connections for two I²C busses, one of which contains an integrated serial EEPROM device.

The onboard dsPIC33 DSC features 128 KB internal Flash program memory and 16 KB internal SRAM, as well as numerous on-chip peripherals which include an advanced 8-channel motor control PWM unit, an enhanced CAN controller, two serial peripheral interfaces (SPIs), timer/counters, serial-interface controllers, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and more.



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