ON Semiconductor has introduced a motor development kit for motors up to 4kW, and soon to 10kW.

OnSemi-MotorDriverDevKit-773
“In order to improve efficiency, ac induction motor drives designers must understand how these and other types of motors operate under all load conditions, and intelligently compensating for variable conditions,” according to the company. “The Motor Development Kit addresses the need for improved energy usage.”
OnSemi-MotorDriverDevKit-450This kit comprises one of a number of power boards, connected to On’s ‘universal controller board’ (UCB – daughter board on photo left, mounts under power board in above photo).
“On Semiconductor already offers a portfolio of power solutions optimised for variable motor control,” said company marketing manager Ali Husain. “Motor Development Kit brings these technologies together into a single ecosystem.”

UCB is based on the Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC family which integrate two ARM Cortex-A9 processor cores alongside an FPGA fabric for both software and hardware configuration.
There is also a 10 channel differential ADC, 12 PWM channels and a number of configurable digital peripherals. Communication ports include USB, JTAG and UART, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet PHY.
The power board have various incarnations of On Semi inverters from high voltage integrated modules to low voltage, discrete mosfets.
Currently there are two:
SECO-1KW-MCTRL-GEVB is suitable for driving motors up to 1kW (above right)
SECO-MDK-4KW-65SMP31-GEVB (‘SPM31’) is for driving motors up 1kW (410Vdc, 4kW short term) (photo above left)
Both of these power boards use intelligent power modules and will be available in Q4 this year.
Available early next year will be one for motors up to 10kW, a TMPIM (transfer moulded power integtated module) in On’s language, then “expect further power boards and expanded design support to be added to the MDK ecosystem”, it said.
Support for software development comes is from XilinxVivado Design Suite for High-Level Synthesis. The UCB can also be programmed using Python, through Xilinx’s open source project PYNQ.