Comms failure on MCWB

[John Fitter]

I have a STEVAL-SPIN3202 programmed and configured for FOC, and a small motor which has been profiled by the profiler and an ESC001V1. Code is auto generated by MCWB and compiled using Eclipse (I have to change the min_stack_size to 0x300 because MCWB gets it wrong).

The motor runs fine in MCWB using the ESC001V1.

Using the STEVAL-SPIN3202 the board connects OK but when I start the motor there is a click followed by a message "Communication is closed, the board doesn't response correctly". This (pidgin English) message is completely useless and provides not the slightest clue as to the nature of the fault.

I am at a standstill with my development after trying many combinations of settings and wasting a lot of time. I do want to use the 3202 in a product I am designing but if I can't get it to turn a motor I will abandon it.

There are other problems. The documentation says for FOC to have J12 on, J11 off, and JP8 on 2-3. The schematic says J12 off and J11 on. Furthermore the schematic says R12 should be 15K for FOC whereas the installed resistor is 5K6. There is no mention in the documentation about replacing the resistor.

These inconsistencies leave me wondering if I have chosen the correct products.

My application is simple and the chip is suited to it IF it works. A small in-runner BLDC motor is fitted with a pump and supplies fuel to a small gas turbine. PCB space is limited on the ECU and the 3202 will create a neat solution. FOC is essential.

Does anyone have any clue, and more importantly, how do I get real diagnostics from MCWB, that can be used to find real problems?

[Claire O.]

Hello John,

Just to understand your problem:

• you have an issue to use WB generated code with STEVAL-SPIN3202
• you would like to understand how to set the jumper and resistance for STEVAL-SPIN3202 for FOC.

Is that correct?

Sorry to ask but which SDK version are you using? And of course you generated a different code than the ESC001V1.

Thanks and best regards,

Claire

[John Fitter]

I have no problem setting the jumpers for the STEVAL-SPIN3202. I am only annoyed that the documentation is wrong and inconsistent as described in my earlier post.

I have now succeeded in getting the motor to run quite well on the ESC001V1 and on the X-NUCLEO-IHM08M1 with a Nucleo 446RE board. This was only possible because I could profile the motor with the ESC001V1. It was not possible to profile the motor with the Nucleo 446RE even though the documentation states that it can be done.

I am left with the inescapable conclusion that this motor is not about to run properly with a single shunt resistor. I would need the STEVAL-SPIN3201 to be able to evaluate the driver chip. Since this evaluation board is twice the price of the ESC001V1 I will most likely re-evaluate my hardware design decisions.

Even to get this motor to run on the SPIN3202 I needed to adjust numerous parameters because there was insufficient processing performance and the results were still unsatisfactory. It appears to me that the spin3202 is only suitable for trapezoidal drive, something that can be easily handled by an 8bit processor. Well, that's my experience so far.

[Enrico Poli]

Hello John,

First of all, I'm very sorry the errors in STEVAL-SPIN3202 documentations caused you problems during the evaluation of our product. For sure this is not the way we want to provide support to our customers.

I'll ask for updating the documentation.

About the communication problem, I think the problem could be due by a shutdown of the device at the start-up due to an overload.

Could you check the supply voltage of the board?

Following some guidelines for the configuration of the WB and hardware.

Step1 hardware configuration:

The configuration for the FOC - 1shunt driving with the STEVAL-SPIN3202 is:

• J11/JUMPER4 --> closed
• J12/JUMPER5 --> open
• J8/JUMPER3 --> closed on 2-3 position
• R12 resistor --> 5.6 k

Step2 MCWB configuration:

When you create the project selecting the STEVAL-SPIN3202 as target board, most of the parameters are already set, but you should verify the following:

• In the current sensing configuration, the opamp configuration should be the following:

• Verify the FOC frequency is less or equal to 13 kHz. FOC frequency is PWM freq. divided by the execution rate (drive management --> drive settings)
• The UART baudrate is 9600 (digital I/O)

[Laurent Ca...]

The question has been moved from the "Motor Control Hardware" section to the "STM32 Motor Control" section (the question is about the STM32 MC SDK). 

Best regards