One of the common peripherals we see in many designs is motor control. A motor driver and controller feature can be used in industrial controls, embedded systems, small IoT products, home automation, and much more. Motor controller components are so common that many of the major semiconductor manufacturers have developed extensive portfolios of motor drivers, with some being tailored for specific applications.
To help designers navigate the many motor control options available, we decided to highlight three options that can be found inside the CELUS Design Platform. These three have simple implementation in each of the discussed applications. And best of all, schematics for these components can be easily generated in popular ECAD file formats.
CELUS offers a wealth of motor control ICs, and we don’t have time to highlight all of these in a single article. However, we want to focus on three options that illustrate the range of applications that benefit from a precision motor driver and controller.
As shown in the block diagram below, control is primarily provided by an I2C interface and 3 GPIOs, overall providing a simple interface for control and configuration with a microcontroller.
The DA7282 comes in two package options: wafer-level chip-scale package (WLCSP) with fine-pitch BGA footprint, and a standard QFN footprint. An additional feature of the DA7282 is the 20x lower standby current compared to the earlier DA7280 and DA7281 part numbers, extending the lifetime of systems requiring small batteries. The low standby current and the BGA package make this motor driver IC ideal for implementing haptic feedback in small wearable devices. Learn more about DA7282 from Renesas Electronics!
The DRV10983 driver is designed for 3-phase BLDC motor control operating from 12 to 24 V input voltage with up to 2 A drive current. Contrary to many BLDC motor drivers, this component can accept either analog or PWM input on a dedicated pin. Alternatively, driving can be controlled directly from an I2C interface, and the device reports the motor speed back to the system microcontroller.
While this component includes an integrated driving stage, it requires a large external inductor as shown in the application circuit below. The driver itself is also in an SOIC package, which makes the total footprint for the driving circuit somewhat large, as would be expected with higher power delivery capabilities of this circuit.
The block diagram below shows the overall operation of this component. The SPEED pin is automatically multiplexed to allow for PWM or analog driving, or I2C can be used to configure the motor driver. The device also provides two additional pins, DIR and FG, to provide directional indication and commutation frequency respectively to the system microcontroller.
The MAX31760AEE is a dual driver for PWM-driven 4-wire fans at low voltage. The typical application for this is small driving smaller fans which might be used in an enclosure for an embedded computer or similar system. The two 4-wire fan interfaces allow for independent control of two different fans at two different speeds.
This device is suitable for use in ASIC cooling as the device can be used to measure temperature with a remote-connected thermal diode. Alternatively, an exposed thermal diode on a CPU/GPU die can be used for direct die temperature measurement. High-precision temperature determination is then accomplished with an internal ADC, as shown in the MAX31760AEE block diagram.
As a safety feature, the MAX31760AEE also measures its own die temperature, something which not all fan drivers will perform. This eliminates the need for an external thermistor with monitoring on an analog pin in the system MCU. If over-temperature is detected, the ALERT pin is used to warn the microcontroller.
One important resource for this component is access to open-source drivers for configuration. Click here for C source code for the MAX31760AEE driver or learn more about the MAX31760AEE from Analog Devices.
The CELUS Design Platform enables designers to quickly access schematics for these motor driver ICs, as well as many other motor drivers for a range of applications. Once a motor driver is selected, CELUS will seamlessly integrate the schematics for the component into your system architecture and output schematics in popular PCB design software formats.
To access a motor driver option and build your system architecture, CELUS offers project templates with motor driver functional blocks, and these templates can be accessed from your CELUS dashboard.
These motor drive components can be accessed from the Motor Drivers functional block inside CELUS.
Learn more about the CELUS Design Platform and how to access motor driver IC schematics in this video.
With the CELUS Design Platform, designers can speed up their development efforts with components from their favorite manufacturers. By defining components and their associated circuitry as CUBOs, CELUS helps reduce risk for designers and allows generated designs to be immediately used in industry-standard ECAD tools. This shifts a designer’s focus from circuit design to system design and allows a designer to more efficiently integrate diverse features into a new product.
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