I have a reasonable amount of (hobby level) Arduino & PCB design experience, but this is my first time working with motors at all, much less BLDC Motors, so I’m hoping someone can fill a few holes in my knowledge and help me piece this project together. Thanks in advance for the assistance! I’m sure my questions are in documentation somewhere that I just haven’t found yet.
EDIT: Unfortunately all new users have a limit on number of photos and links, so all photos have been uploaded here: SimpleFOC motor driver. - Album on Imgur
I have a lighting fixture that I’m trying to replace the control board for. I’m trying to utilize the existing BLDC Motor. Unfortunately I don’t have a datasheet for it, but I do know it is NEMA-23 sized and powered by 36V. Here’s a photo of the motor and existing driver circuit. The MOSFETs are kind of hard to read, but they’re G420N06 (PDF Warning).
I would love to use a pre-built motor driver, but I haven’t been able to find a reasonably priced (under ~$20) that supports 36V, so I’m planning on building on into my PCB with the MCU (an ATSAMD51 if that matters). I plan to use the MP6540, which leads me to question 1: I have plenty of I/O and can run the MP6540H in PWM6 mode just fine, but what advantages does it give me? Also, is it useful to hook up the current sense pins to my MCU?
Next thing I’m wondering is about encoders. A photo of what is currently in place is below. The wheel on the right is press-fit around the output shaft, and the module on the left straddles the outer edge of the notched wheel. Looks like 2x optical sensors, would I set this up with the CPR the number of notches on the wheel? And would I use the receiver for sensor 1 as encA and sensor 2 as encB?