Infineon DC Motor Shield w/TLE94112EL for Arduino - Review

RE: Infineon DC Motor Shield w/TLE94112EL for Arduino - Review

DAB — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 19:07:19 GMT

Nice road test to demonstrate the basic capabilities of the board.

DAB

RE: Infineon DC Motor Shield w/TLE94112EL for Arduino - Review

mcb1 — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 12:41:31 GMT

I'm glad the initial thoughts we had were able to be verified, and worked through.

I have to say the support from Infineon was brilliant and more companies could learn lessons from these guys/gals.

You've learnt some valuable lessons about DC motors, that you'll remember for a long time. [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-275dafce-8d95-45d5-a447-1a94ebed5304/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

We've seen issues with motors before on this forum, and it usually always boils down to the start current, rather than the running current that is causing the issue.

One trick I use is to see what the stall current is.

In many of the high torque high speed motors this is very high, and is one reason many of the small robots don't recommend using NiCad or Lipo batteries. The infrastructure can't handle the currents drawn when they are stalled/jammed/not-moving when they should be.

I am a little surprised that the current detection is so quick.

Many other controllers use a limiting feature to try and overcome it.

Many AC motors add a VFD to stop the mechanical and electrical shock when starting at zero rpm, which is effectively PWM.

I think the Road Test showed some aspects that many others might get caught out with.

It is priced for a hobbyist market and is very likely to have people doing exactly what you tried initially ...

Cheers

Mark

RE: Infineon DC Motor Shield w/TLE94112EL for Arduino - Review

geralds — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 12:29:11 GMT

Hi Thomas,

Thank you for the nice Review,

I'm happy to see you solved the errors you mentioned at the beginning of your RoadTest.

Your hard work was also helpful for me in my RoadTest to be carful connecting all components together.

I often checked across the wires, currents, also the voltages so that i was able to measure all of them without any errors.

Oh yeah, the small SMD .... you need a magnifying glass or microscope to see the small dust on the PCB.

Thank you

Best Regards,

Gerald

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RE: Infineon DC Motor Shield w/TLE94112EL for Arduino - Review

Workshopshed — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 09:33:19 GMT

That initial motor inrush current is surely an issue with many motors. I'm a little surprised that the board can't compensate for this.

I've seen a lot of AC motor control circuits that have a separate starter circuit, perhaps something like that could work for DC too?

The low value resistor technique could be useful, I'll see if that works on a different board that has the same kind of issue

RE: Infineon DC Motor Shield w/TLE94112EL for Arduino - Review

balearicdynamics — Sat, 29 Jul 2017 22:12:11 GMT

Interesting road test Thomas. You have pointed the attention on to the problems coming from the motors. I am wondering about these spikes, do you think it is due the low quality of the motors of something else? As far as I know it is a bit out of standard a motor that generates a startup spike about 10 times the accepted range. I have used cheap brushed motors but in the specifications they was in the 0.6 A range with max spikes declared of 1.2A that shounds acceptable, ad was very useful to reproduce not only the features but also the error conditions of the board.

BTW the board range is 5-18 but I have tried with 3.5 V motors and it worked without problems. Then I though a lot on how to generate an under voltage error until I discovered that... It was just needed to power off the motors [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-275dafce-8d95-45d5-a447-1a94ebed5304/contentimage_5F00_2516.png:16:16]

Enrico