Atmel AVR Flash Microcontrollers for Motors

Atmel has expanded the support range of AVR microcontrollers to AC and brushless DC (BLDC) motor control applications, bringing highly flexible and cost-effective solutions to these applications. The excellent performance and comprehensive features of AVR Flash microcontrollers provide designers with the best solution to meet the various technical requirements related to motor control design.  

Existing application-specific standard products (ASSPs) are often too specific and limited for the target application, and using microcontrollers for motor control is a more attractive option. AVR Flash microcontrollers include devices ranging from 8-pin to 100-pin devices, and can handle simple applications such as PC fans to extremely advanced motor control applications. All AVR products integrate a Flash program memory and an EEPROM (electrically erasable read-only memory), allowing designers to use the same microcontroller for multiple designs and install the latest program at any time during the product life cycle. In addition, the code compatibility of AVR allows designers to transfer their development results to other AVR devices and meet various requirements. This flexibility reduces time to market and helps minimize system costs.  

Motor control is achieved by using internal timers with PWM (pulse width modulation), analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and input/output device interrupt signals. PWM processes the voltage fluctuations of the motor and realizes speed and acceleration control. The built-in 10-bit ADC measures energy consumption and issues over-current warnings to the target application , while the AVR's pin-change interrupt monitors the brushless DC motor's Hall Sensor. For brushless DC motors without sensors, the AVR's ADC and analog comparator are used to predict the motor's status. All interrupt-based features enable the execution of motor control functions while ensuring additional resources are available to meet other application requirements. Typical functions include custom startup sequences, temperature measurement, SMBus(TM) (System Management Bus), Two-Wire Interface, and SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) communications.