Suitable Microcontroller for Power Electronics? (Beginner)

[sean0118]

Hi everyone,


I'm looking for a microcontroller development board that I can use for applications such as DC-DC converters and battery chargers. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the choice available, but it seems something ARM based would provide me with skills that would directly transfer to industry?

With regards to peripherals I'm guessing I would need an ADC, DAC and PWM, but I'm not sure what else? This Freescale FRDM-KL05Z seems to have those features at a great price, but would I run into trouble with compilers and documentation etc? I intend to program it in C or C++.

Can anyone recommend anything? 

[sean0118]

Just to be clearer, I meant just to control a DC-DC converter or battery charger, all the power stuff will be separate to the dev board of course.

[dannyf]

Can anyone recommend anything?

Quite a few chips for such applications, like from TI or Microchip.

However, Freescale is the absolute king in that business.

Assuming of course you intend to produce a good quality inverter.

Otherwise, pretty much any mcu can do.

[free_electron]

freescale for sure. they rule that market.
They even have special dual core cpu's where one core is 32 bit and the other 16 bit. one monitors the other ...

[mazurov]

For applications with slow changing input/output, like battery chargers with solar input there are suitable  PIC16 devices. Get Microchip Appnote 1467 (and the same authors wrote another note describing MPPT for the same circuit, but I can't find it at the moment), build the thing and play with it. It is very simple and at the same time quite capable. More importantly, the code uses no libs so you'll be able to study every detail, if you feel like it.

[sean0118]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I've just been reading up on the Freescale DSCs. However, I can't find many afordable dev boards except for maybe the MC56F8006? Which doubles in price to $130 with the JTAG programmer included (I think?). 

For applications with slow changing input/output, like battery chargers with solar input there are suitable  PIC16 devices. Get Microchip Appnote 1467...

Thanks I'll check it out. I'm starting to think the DSCs might be overkill for what I need.


So just to check, the ARM processors are not really suited to this stuff right? Or would the Freescale board from my original post be ok?

[coppice]

So just to check, the ARM processors are not really suited to this stuff right?

Look at the app notes for M series ARM based MCUs, and you'll find a huge number of them are for power electronics, especially motor control.

[nctnico]

Yup. Loads of ARM controllers for power control. I recently used an LPC11U67 from NXP in a design to do the PWM control in a wireless power transmitter design. The PWM controller in that device is capable of doing lots of things including handling external error (overcurrent) signals.

[sean0118]

For applications with slow changing input/output, like battery chargers with solar input there are suitable  PIC16 devices. Get Microchip Appnote 1467 (and the same authors wrote another note describing MPPT for the same circuit, but I can't find it at the moment)...

I think the MPPT application note you mean is AN1521?

I was really considering building that battery charger, but the PIC they use (PIC16F1503) has an inbuilt NCO. The only development board I can find with an NCO is the AC103011, however that only has 8bit ADCs and its flash and ram sizes are probably too small. 

I'm now thinking I might look into the ARM development boards again and aim to build a simple buck converter... 


Edit: I changed my mind again, that battery charger is just too interesting. It's all in that variable frequency with constant on time...  I can't say no to that

At least it doesn't look as hard as I originally thought to develop my own development board.

Edit2: Actually looking at that schematic I don't think I'll even require a development board?
 

[diyaudio]

Hi everyone,


I'm looking for a microcontroller development board that I can use for applications such as DC-DC converters and battery chargers. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the choice available, but it seems something ARM based would provide me with skills that would directly transfer to industry?

With regards to peripherals I'm guessing I would need an ADC, DAC and PWM, but I'm not sure what else? This Freescale FRDM-KL05Z seems to have those features at a great price, but would I run into trouble with compilers and documentation etc? I intend to program it in C or C++.

Can anyone recommend anything? 

Although you specified beginner I would look at a DSC (dsPIC) or a DSP (any brand will do). I'm not sure what part of the power converter you want to fit  a microcontroller/dsc/dsp here is a tear-down of a APC SmartUPS


My theory is they using the TMSC6000 DSP as a the main digital control loop to drive the system, so component drift is non-existent. there is a FPGA as well a rather interesting mix for a UPS. (not sure if this thing was over engineered)

[dannyf]

however that only has 8bit ADCs and its flash and ram sizes are probably too small

there is a wide spectrum of "smps" and you can always find a way to implement it on any mcu.

For an example, google roman black smps to see how he implemented on on a PIC.

[GNU_Ninja]

For applications with slow changing input/output, like battery chargers with solar input there are suitable  PIC16 devices. Get Microchip Appnote 1467 (and the same authors wrote another note describing MPPT for the same circuit, but I can't find it at the moment), build the thing and play with it. It is very simple and at the same time quite capable. More importantly, the code uses no libs so you'll be able to study every detail, if you feel like it.

This? ==> http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/01467A.pdf 

[Phoenix]

freescale for sure. they rule that market.
They even have special dual core cpu's where one core is 32 bit and the other 16 bit. one monitors the other ...

Freescale and TI are the two big guns in power electronics MCUs. TI have some pretty powerful dual core offerings too (2xC280+2xCLA or C280+ARM). However I wouldn't really say they are beginner friendly.

Lots of more basic MCUs (MSP430, ATTiny etc.) these days offer ADC, some PWM functionality and a comparator. Everything you need for a basic converter and ability to try some different control algorithms.

[donotdespisethesnake]

I would definitely look to an ARM platform, for low cost and wide support. Rightly or not, ARM are basically taking over the whole market. Even Freescale have dropped development on their whole DSC range, replaced with ARM Cortex based Kinetis range, which are fairly standard Cortex offerings. The Kinetis KV are "specialised" for motor and power control applications, but they are pretty standard apart from some Freeescale IP blocks borrowed from DSC.

Freescale are putting a lot into Kinetis, they have skipped M3 in favor of M4, and as a result have some very low priced M4 MCUs. They also provide free software with Kinetis Design Studio for most of their Kinetis chips. They also have cheap dev boards with the "Freedom" badge, and high-end "Tower" kit.

Freescale's documentation and support let them down, and their chips lack easy to use bootloaders. Not really a problem for professionals, but for hobbyists and tinkerers a JTAG adapter is essential.

STM and NXP both have plenty of easy to use and capable Cortex chips, and the built in bootloaders make these much easier to get going.

[sean0118]

I ended up going with the PIC battery charger (An ARM project is on the list as well  )

Actually just got some PIC16F1503s and a PICkit3 in the mail today. I was a bit surprised to see they included a disk with MPLAB v8.70. Do you guys think I should use that, MPLAB X or a different IDE? Also, any compiler recommendations?

Got a full packet of LEDs, resistors and jumper wire here ready to run a hello word. 

[chickenHeadKnob]

This recommendation is probably too late,
ST micro has a relatively new cortex M4 specific to digital controlled SMPS inverters and such: STM32F334
http://www.st.com/web/en/catalog/mmc/SC1169/SS1576/LN1820?icmp=ln1820_pron_pr1_jun2014&sc=stm32f334-pr

ST has both a NUCLEO series and Discovery series eval board and application note for this chip. Very inexpensive to try out and get started.

[zapta]

...However, Freescale is the absolute king in that business.

What business, general ARM MCUs or something more specific?