Renesas Electronics America expands RX MCU support with BLDC motor-control kit for energy-efficient apps

DESIGN West 2012, SANTA CLARA, USA: Renesas Electronics America, a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced a new motor-control kit, expanding support for its RX62T microcontroller (MCU) Group. Featuring a single precision floating point unit (FPU) and high-performance RX CPU core, the RX62T MCU Group was designed for implementing high-efficiency motor control required by white goods such as washers/dryers and refrigerators, HVAC equipment, and industrial control systems such as industrial drives, servo control, multi-axis handlers and motion control applications.

The RX62T-based motor-control kit is a complete end-to-end solution that will allow engineers to learn more about sensor-less vector control algorithms, evaluate the performance using a graphical user interface (GUI) and implement sensor-less vector control in their applications.

“As electric motors and other control applications become more efficiency conscious, embedded systems designers are challenged with delivering precise control implementation capabilities and compliance with changing industry safety standards within tighter power constraints,” said Ritesh Tyagi, senior director, MCU Products, Renesas Electronics America. “Renesas Electronics understands these challenges and offers the new RX62T kit, which provides designers a platform for evaluation and development, to meet these evolving design targets.”

RX62T motor-control kit
The new, easy-to-use Renesas motor-control kit offers simplicity in and out of the box, in an end-to-end solution that helps designers simplify the design process, and reduce development time and cost. In addition to a GUI for easy tuning and evaluation, and application notes as additional learning tools, the kit features:

* RX62T MCU featuring the high-performance 165 DMIPS at 100 MHz RX core, IEEE 754-compliant FPU, 5V supply voltage for excellent noise immunity and on-chip PGAs.
* A 24V/4-pole BLDC motor with encoder and hall sensors for flexibility in evaluating bi-directional speed and position control using the source code provided with the kit.
* 4-speed control algorithms and 1 position-control algorithm, developed by Renesas.
* RJK0656DPB MOSFET, a high-speed switching power MOSFET featuring 60V source voltage, and low drive current, RDSon and gate charge.
* A connector for a user-supplied high-voltage inverter.
* Option to use external amplifiers or on-chip PGAs, and compare performance.
* Additional Renesas voltage regulator and logic ICs.
* E1 debugger for code debugging and Flash programming.
* HEW IDE and evaluation copy of Renesas RX compiler schematics and gerber files of the board.

RX development environment
A leading supplier of analog and power devices, Renesas leverages its strong signal chain expertise to provide customers with complete end-to-end solutions, including advanced MCU technologies and a robust design ecosystem with proprietary and third-party development tools and middleware.

Since the rollout of the RX MCU family in 2009, Renesas Electronics has been steadily introducing new devices, features, tools and partnerships to expand the capabilities of the MCUs. Renesas Electronics supports the RX600 MCUs with a comprehensive hardware/software tool set from the company and third parties. Renesas Electronics offers the popular High-Performance Embedded Workshop (HEW) integrated development environment (IDE), which includes the RX-optimizing C/C++ compiler with integrated support for the low-cost E1 JTAG on-chip debugging tool, as well as the comprehensive E20 high-speed trace on-chip debugging tool.

The HEW IDE and Renesas Electronics' C/C++ compiler come with unlimited use for 60 days, and then the compiler size is limited to 128 KB thereafter. Renesas Electronics also provides a full firmware library for all peripherals and hardware development kits with sample code and protocol stacks. Third-party support for RTOS, middleware, communication protocol stacks, and color graphics is available from the global community of Renesas Electronics' partner vendors.

The RX62T motor-control kit will be available in limited quantities beginning end of March 2012. The kit is expected to be available in volume production beginning end of September.