Date: 20/11/2010

New motor driver evaluation platform from TI for spinning motors

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) has released a new line of scalable evaluation platforms for spinning motors. The DRV8412 evaluation kit (DRV8412-C2-KIT) includes the hardware and software needed to spin two brushed DC motors or a single stepper motor. This evaluation kit can run up to 6 A continuous/12 A peak at 50 V. The targeted applications include medical pumps, gate openers, stage lighting, textile manufacturing tools, and industrial or consumer robotics.

The key features of the evaluation platform include:
1. Motor control and driver solution includes the DRV8412 motor driver, a real-time control C2000 Piccolo microcontroller (MCU) controlCARD module, a quickstart GUI, full development source code, Code Composer Studio (CCStudio) integrated development environment (IDE), and motors.
2. DRV8412 motor driver with integrated MOSFETs provides up to three times lower Rdson than competing solutions, enabling up to 97-percent efficient operation, according to TI. The DRV8412 motor driver also includes on-chip protection, such as cycle-by-cycle over-current, over-temperature, and under-voltage protection.
3. The C2000 Piccolo MCU performs control, communications, and debug.
4. C source code and GUI demonstrate voltage and current control of one or two brushed DC motors.

Price: US$199

Availability: Now