DRV8302 "voltage sensing" hardware

Hello guys,

I have a quick question regarding some things in DRV8302 driver schematic. For the past year I’ve been working on some custom BLDC drivers using the TI’s DRV8302 chip. I based the design on the “typical application” from the datasheet but up until now I haven’t realized that a part of it is completely useless for the FOC control (I think :D).

So my question is, what do you think that these parts of the power stage are for?

All the X_SENSE labels lead to ADC of the microcontroller. From my research it seems that those are for some direct “voltage sensing” thing. Am I right about it being unnecessary for FOC control of BLDC motors using SimpleFOC?

Just wanted to ask somebody who might have experience with this before I discard it from my PCB to save space :D.

Thank you!!

Adam

Hi @Papouc

Sorry no one answered you sooner :slight_smile:

The top yellow marked circuit is for bus voltage sensing. It is very useful in order to be able to auto-configure your firmware when using different power supplies or batteries.
In theory it can also be used for bus level overvoltage protection by detecting over-voltage conditions.

The three yellow marked ones on the bottom are for phase voltage sensing. These can be used to sense the individual phase voltages and could be used to implement BEMF-driven control (not supported by SimpleFOC at the moment).

None of these circuits is actually needed for FOC or using SimpleFOC.