Texas Instruments Korea (President and CEO Kent Chon, www.ti.com/ww/kr ) August 28, 2013 – Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) today announced the introduction of its innovative InstaSPIN-FOC™ sensorless motor control technology on its cost-effective, real-time C2000™ Piccolo™ F2802x microcontroller (MCU) series. Previously available only to specialized motor developers, this highly efficient, three-phase motor control technology is now accessible to a broader range of developers, enabling smaller package sizes and significantly lower costs. Embedded in the read-only memory (ROM) of the C2000 Piccolo F2802x MCUs, TI InstaSPIN-FOC (field-oriented control) technology allows engineers to accelerate motor control development while improving efficiency in cost-sensitive brushless DC (BLDC), permanent magnet (PMSM) and AC induction motor-based applications.

TI's low-cost Piccolo F2802x MCUs with integrated InstaSPIN-FOC can identify, tune and control any type of motor, whether synchronous or asynchronous, in just minutes, across three phases, making them suitable for a wide range of applications, including washing machines, compressors, pumps, fans, electric bicycles, tools, treadmills, compact drives, sewing and textile equipment, forklifts, and hobby motors. Before TI announced its InstaSPIN-FOC technology in February 2013, sensorless FOC technology was out of reach for most developers. This was because existing sensorless algorithms were not robust enough for real-world application conditions and were difficult to implement in complex control systems, requiring months of development time. InstaSPIN-FOC technology reduces system complexity and improves motor efficiency, reliability, and performance at a lower cost, making it accessible to a wider range of designers. This technology overcomes previous limitations and allows for further cost reductions.

Key Features and Benefits of the Piccolo F2802x MCUs with InstaSPIN-FOC™ Technology
• Ease of use: 48-pin package, 32KB or 64KB flash, and priced around $2 for high-volume applications, making them accessible to more motor designers.
• Reduce design time: Nearly fully automated motor parameter identification, software observer tuning, and torque control tuning reduce design time by months.
• Pre-Evaluate Before You Buy: The free, interactive InstaSPIN-FOC online simulation tool allows designers to easily evaluate TI InstaSPIN-FOC capabilities by optimizing speed and load profiles with a variety of motor types and obtaining simulation results in minutes.
• Encoder-like estimator performance: The embedded on-chip FAST™ observer algorithm provides encoder-like performance, allowing reliable prediction of rotor flux, angle, speed, and torque across a wide range of usage conditions using only current and voltage analysis. Accurate sensorless prediction eliminates the need for physical sensors for virtually any torque and speed application.
• Supports all 3-phase motors: Implement all types of 3-phase motors, both synchronous (BLDC, SPM, IPM) and asynchronous (ACI), with the same solution.
• Identification and Tuning: Use offline motor commissioning to identify the required motor parameters, tune the FAST algorithm, and initialize the current controller to achieve stable operation. Optional online resistance re-estimation mode achieves robust observer performance under very demanding low-speed loads by tracking changes.
• Eliminates startup issues: Built-in startup mode and observer angle synchronization in less than one electrical cycle eliminates startup issues common in other sensorless techniques.
• Low-speed performance: Provides low-speed performance that maintains angle integrity at steady state below 1Hz (rated) with full torque, zero-speed stability, zero-speed reversal, and smooth stall recovery.
• Achieve flexible system architecture: Provides system architecture flexibility to implement a single function call FOC torque controller or a fully customized control system using FAST as a software motor sensor.
• Achieve most efficient motor size: Built-in field control enables field-weakening (high speed) and passive field-boosting (high torque) applications, achieving most efficient motor size
• Massive energy savings: PowerWarp™ mode adaptively minimizes magnetizing current to generate only the torque needed, saving wasted energy during light-load operation, enabling significant energy savings with induction motors.
• Easy development and fast evaluation: MotorWare™ provides a new motor control library (modules, drivers, system examples, and materials) for convenient development and fast evaluation. MotorWare provides the latest C object-oriented and API-based coding techniques and offers more than 10 lab-based projects to experience InstaSPIN-FOC features such as motor ID, motor parameter storage, torque control, speed controller tuning, runtime resistance monitoring, low-speed (high-speed), modulation techniques, and PowerWarp.

Price and availability
The Piccolo F28026F and F28027F MCUs with InstaSPIN-FOC are available in volume quantities, priced at $4.03 in 10,000-unit quantities. The InstaSPIN-FOC online simulation tool is available free of charge. Developers can also evaluate the solution with a modular controlCARD (TMDSCNCD28027F) priced at $69. This controlCARD is included in the $699 TMDSHVMTRINSPIN high-voltage (50V to 350V, 10A) motor kit and is combined with an external emulator for use with the previously released low-voltage inverter evaluation module (DRV8312/DRV8301 RevD). The previously released Piccolo F2806x microcontrollers also offer InstaSPIN-MOTION along with InstaSPIN-FOC.

Learn more about C2000 Piccolo F2802x MCUs, InstaSPIN-FOC, and TI motor control solutions.
• C2000 microcontroller: www.ti.com/c2x-f2802xis-pr-lp2
• InstaSPIN Motor Control Solution: www.ti.com/c2x-f2802xis-pr-lp3
• TI Motor Control Solutions: www.ti.com/c2x-f2802xis-pr-lp4
• Motor Control Video: www.ti.com/c2x-f2802xis-pr-tr