Texas Instruments Incorporated (www.ti.com) has expanded its motor control solutions portfolio with the addition of DK-LM3S-DRV8312, which is a motor control kit suitable for spinning three-phase brushless motors with a Stellaris Cortex-M3 microcontroller (MCU).

Offering 32-bit Stellaris LM3S818 microcontroller, the new motor control kit also comes with DRV8312 motor driver to spin 6.5A, sub-50V three-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motors in just a few minutes. A low-cost solution, the Stellaris ARM Cortex-M microcontroller motor control kit is ideally suited for high-volume motor control applications, such as low-voltage fans, pumps, blowers, compressors and tools.

The motor control kit includes a Stellaris LM3S818 controlCARD module, which features a pre-programmed firmware required in flash memory to operate the company’s InstaSPIN-BLDC solution, together with other customer-developed applications, when connected into the DRV8312 motor driver base board.

Its controlCard module offers 64 KB flash, 50 MHz performance, eight KB SCRAM and six PWM generators, enabling developers to make complex motion control designs with a small footprint.

The Stellaris motor control kit’s DRV8312 motor driver eliminates the need for expensive external heat sink and deliver up to 6.5A. The fully-protected motor driver is reliable featuring cycle-by-cycle over-current, cross-conduction, over-temperature and under-voltage protection, reducing board space and design complexity while ensuring higher system reliability.

In addition, the kit’s 24V three-phase BLDC motor can continuously operate at up to 3.5A. Its supporting software includes InstaSPIN-BLDC software for reliable and fast motor start-up on any motor and StellarisWare® software with TI’s IQmath Library for fixed to floating point conversion.