“New products like Microchip’s dsPIC33C DSC devices, with their high analog integration, demonstrate our continued investment aimed at simplifying the design of motor control systems and reducing development and bill of materials costs in automotive, industrial, medical, and consumer applications,” said Joe Thomsen, vice president of Microchip’s MCU16 business unit. “Our enhanced support ecosystem helps engineers get their designs to market faster by delivering the optimal combination of performance, efficiency, and reliability.”.
Among the new additions to Microchip's motor control family are:
• DSC dsPIC®: The cost-optimized, Functional Safety-Ready DSC dsPIC33CK64MC10x microcontrollers for Field-Oriented Control (FOC) support PIM (Plug-in Modules) for motor control on motor control development boards, as well as a new, cost-effective development board for low-voltage motor control. The MPLAB® X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and MCC facilitate rapid code development, while the motorBench® Development Suite provides optimized code generation for FOC motor control.
• PIC32MK MCJ and MCM Microcontrollers for FOC: These second-generation 32-bit microcontrollers offer 32-bit floating-point performance and digital signal processing with flexible communication options. Sharing analog functions with the dsPIC33CK allows for seamless migration between different device classes. These devices also feature multiple CAN-FD and USB ports. The microcontrollers are supported by MPLAB X IDE with three development hardware options. Among the software support for the PIC32MK is a motor control software package for sensor-based and sensorless applications via the MPLAB Harmony v3 software environment.
• motorBench Development Suite: Version 2.35 of Microchip's graphical user interface-based software development tool reduces the time required for motor rotation using FOC and generates optimized source code for a given motor. This version extends support to the dsPIC33CK family and adds AT-PLL (Angle Track-Phase Locked Loop) estimator, FW (Field Weakening), MTPA (Maximum Torque Per Amp), and DTC (Dead-Time Compensation) functions, among many others.
• ZS/MT (Zero Speed/Maximum Torque) Algorithm: Eliminates Hall sensors in applications requiring high quiescent or low-speed torque for low-inductance motors. It is compatible with DSC dsPIC33, as well as SAM and PIC32MK microcontrollers for motor control.
• dsPIC33CK Low Voltage Motor Control Development Board: Offers a platform for application development and a reference for custom board design for the dsPIC33CK family.
• Low Cost, High Efficiency Reference Design for Refrigerator Compressors: Joins a growing family of turnkey designs that showcase best practices for motor control designs for specific applications to shorten time to market.
Pricing and Availability:
The DSC dsPIC33CK64MC105 microcontrollers are available in six packages, starting at 4 x 4 mm, with 28 to 48 pins and a starting price of $1.13 for 10,000 units, with 32KB to 64KB of Flash memory and 8KB of RAM. The PIC32MK microcontrollers have between 48 and 100 pins and a starting price of $3.27 for 10,000 units, with 256KB to 1MB of Flash memory and 64KB to 256KB of RAM.
