Controlling a 3-phase motor with a DHB-10

David Carrier

I have been working on using a Propeller microcontroller to drive a sensored three-phase permanent magnet BLDC motor, like those used on hoverboard-style scooters. It uses three of the four half-H-bridges on a DHB-10, and three I/O inputs for the hall effect encoder sensors.

As demonstrated in the attached video, I currently I have it reading position and running the motor, in either direction, at a variable power level. I will be out of the office for a few weeks, but when I get back, I'll merge the driver into the DHB-10 firmware, to get full position control, using only the motor's built-in sensors. After proving out the software, I'll start working on a new motor driver, that will be able to simultaneously drive two of the motors. It should work as a drop-in replacement for the DHB-10.

I will release the source code, once I have everything working.

Tubular

Wow, that is super neat, David.

So are you trying to drive 2 motors using the 4 half bridges of one DHB-10 (2 motors x 3 phases across 4 output nodes)? Or are there 2 DHB-10's?

David Carrier

For now, I'm using one three-phase motor per DHB-10, and I'm tacking on a second DHB-10, solely as a motor driver, with all of the logic on the first DHB-10. For now, I'm using the awkward amalgamation to prototype with, and when I have a proof-of-concept working, I'll design a single motor controller that can directly control two 3-phase motors.

Tubular

Sounds good, David.