Request for help with a smart balancer development.

[ZKóka.1]

Dear All,

I would like to ask for your help in the following topic. I've got a new task to develop a special balancer to lift up different weights (from 20 to 50kg) without the need of changing it's spring force. The weight of the products has to be monitored and stored in the ERP system. The plan is to use a BLDC motor (probably T-motor P60) as a motor spring, and control it's position with sensord or sensorless FOC. To developthe hardware I'm planning to buy the followings:

STM32F7508-DK - to develop GUI (request of the boss😀 ) - OpenSTLinux or Yocto with TouchGFX

X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1 or EVALSTDRIVE101 - motor controller

May I ask that are these items suitable for this kind of hardware and software develpoment? Sorry for my dumb question, I'm completly newby in this topic. 😀

Look forward to your feedback.

Regards:

Zoltán

[Dario CUCCHI]

Hi @Zoltán Kókai​ and welcome to the ST Community !

The board you choose (STM32F7508-DK) has almost all the GPIOs of the microcontroller connected to the different peripherals, so it’s not simple to connect all the lines needed to control the motor driver.

I can suggest two possible ways for the MCU board considering a STM32 F7.

1 -Use the STM32F769I-EVAL that is very complete: among many other features it has the touch display and the motor control connector.

In this case

• The  X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1 needs the X-NUCLEO-IHM09M1 adapter to connect the board to the motor control connector
• The EVALSTDRIVE101 can be plugged directly using a flat cable, because it has the MC connector on board

2 - If you don’t want to use the STM32F769I-EVAL because it has too much peripherals and you need something simpler, you can develop the single parts of your system using a NUCLEO board (for example the NUCLEO-F746GZ).

This evaluation board has "just" the STM32 and the STLINK for programming/debug.

In this case you have a simple and small board, but you need an external display and connect to it in some way with an adapter or some cables.

You also need some connectors and cables to connect the NUCLEO-F746GZ and the motor driver board (X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1 or EVALSTDRIVE101).

Choosing this way, you need some extra effort to setup all the system.

About the motor driver board:

Both the X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1 and the EVALSTDRIVE101 are designed to drive a three phase BLDC motor.

The main differences are on the supply voltage:

- from 6 to 75 V for the EVALSTDRIVE101

- from 10 to 48 V for the X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1

and the current rating:

- 15A rms for the X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1

- 20A rms for the EVALSTDRIVE101; this board is designed to sustain higher powers

You can base your selection according to these two key parameters and the needs of your application.

About the position control: probably the sensored (based on Hall sensors or better on the encoder) is the suitable solution, since the sensorless FOC needs that the motor rotates with some speed in order to detect the position of the rotor.

I hope this post can give you a better overview of the hardware.

Good luck 😀 !

[ZKóka.1]

Hi Darius,

Thank you for the feedback, based on this I will order the Nucleo-746GZ and an IHM08M1 motor driver.

Best regards:

Zoltán