During my middle school years, I was introduced to model aviation. This is a type of aeromodeling that is powered by electric motors, mainly brushless motors. As my skills grew, I kept trying to make my own brushless motor drivers.

Beginning

In fact, BLDC is driven by a simple, six-tap commutation method. Essentially BLDC is turning the commutator of a brushed DC motor into an electronic switch.

Very quickly, I made my own driver using a microcontroller.

Development

Then after that, I discovered the TI C2000 series microcontroller’s motor drive function library and PMSM motors. the FOC algorithm can bring infinite possibilities to motor drive.

So I built a motor lab platform. It was a 57 stepper motor plus an AMT102 optical encoder.

Then MEMS technology-enabled magnetic encoders started to roll out in large numbers, and I ported the drive algorithms to an ST microcontroller, swapping out the optical encoder for a radial magnet-based magnetic encoder. Eventually a small motor driver board was made.

Now, motors based on FOC control technology run in all the places in my house that need a motor drive, including my fish tank water pump, computer water pump, air conditioning inverter compressor, fresh air fan and so on.

I developed variety of driver board to control these motors. (Some of them are sensorless which works in a light load)