Interface 5 motors requiring n-Pulse Generation mode

Neo M · ‎2017-01-24

Posted on January 24, 2017 at 22:25

I asked a question earlier on how to generate n-Pulses from STM32 to drive a servo like interface ->

https://community.st.com/0D50X00009XkdsSSAR

, and it worked. This feature is available only on TIM1/8. Is there a novel way of interfacing 5 motors to one F7?

I am trying to interface 5 Teknic Clearpath SDSK motors to STM32F7 Nucleo Dev Board. They are Brushless DC motors with a stepper like interface. The motor moves a set distance based on the number of pulses it receives. The speed is determined by the frequency of the pulses, like a stepper motor.

I can hook up the two motors to TIM1 and 8, and the rest with a feedback to counter,. DMA buffering won't work, as I rely on the pulses sent to determine the current position of the motor. I am just looking for a better solution here.

#stm32-pwm-timers #n-pulse

waclawek.jan · ‎2017-01-25

Posted on January 25, 2017 at 23:00

That leaves us mostly with the two timers in master-slave arrangement, master gating the slave. Besides TIM1 and TIM8, which are good as they are alone, there are 2 pairs of timers in TIM2..TIM5 and 2 pairs in TIM9..TIM12 possible, that's 6 which is more than you require.

JW

Andrei Chichak · ‎2017-01-25

Posted on January 26, 2017 at 02:43

This would be a great use of the motion control microcode package for the TPU on a MC68332 or PowerPC chip. But it would only be able to handle 16 or 32 channels of this stuff simultaneously.

Unfortunately the ST ARM chips don't do multi-channel motor control very nicely. You're going to have to add some extra hardware, whether processors or motor controllers.