TI C2000 InstaSPIN™-FOC LaunchPad w/ Motor Driver - Review

Table of contents

RoadTest: TI C2000 InstaSPIN™-FOC LaunchPad w/ Motor Driver

Author: kas.lewis

Creation date:

Evaluation Type: Evaluation Boards

Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True

What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: null

What were the biggest problems encountered?: null

Detailed Review:

I would like to thank Element14 for the opportunity to test this LaunchPad and Boosterpack and get the chance to see what they are capable of. I am still in the progress of getting to know and work with this kit but as I am not having the easiest of times I thought I would document what I have and update as I progress. I have outlined what it is I would like to cover, so please do not point out missing text as of yet as I am still in the middle of this review

 

As I have worked with a few Texas Instruments kits before I was hoping this would be an easy and fun kit to play with, but it appears this kit is still somewhat in motion (no pun intended). I will outline why I feel this way as I progress.



Unboxing

The un-boxing of this product was somewhat disappointing. Being a Texas Instruments product I was hoping it would be the high quality and form factor of other LaunchPads and Boosterpacks. Unfortunately the Launchpad is in an old style box making it bigger and bulkier than I would like making it harder to store. As for the booster it can clearly be seen in the picture below that packaging was not at all well thought about. The box is many times larger than the Boosterpack and just an unwieldy shape.

 

P1010210.JPGP1010211.JPG

Figure 1. Unboxing the C2000 and BOOSTXL-DRV8301 Boosterpack

 

On the upside everything needed to get started is included in the box. It has been mentioned that a BLDC motor would have been a nice but as these are easy enough to come by today (computer fans, etc.) I will not hold this against Texas Instruments, would it be nice to include a motor, yes, can it be held against them for not including one, no. There are other more pressing issues I would correct before including a motor, these will be outlined as I go.



C2000

First impressions

Opening the kit and and having a first look at the board you see the usual red well thought out and designed PCB that is standard for Texas Instruments. All the major components and sections on the Launchpad were well labeled and easy to read. The quick start guide has easy to follow steps to get you up and running pretty quickly. The kit comes with a USB cable so there is no need to go searching for one to get the basics up and running.

 

Out of the Box Demo

Once plugged in the there are two simple demos available to run. The first demo is a variation of the standard blinkey. In this case there is a nibble of LEDs and these flash in increasing order, moving from left to right. The second demo is slightly more complex. This demo reads the cores temperature and uses that as a reference for future readings. Based on this value other LEDs will light to indicate how many degrees above or below the reference value the current reading is. if LED 3 is lit then the core is at the reference temperature any additional LED indicates an increase in temperature in binary. Therefore if the reference is 30 ℃ and the temperature goes to 33 ℃ then the LEDs would be 1011, but if the temperature would be 28 ℃ then the LEDs would be 0010.



Figure 2. LEDs Indicating the Increase in Temperature Above the Reference Value

 

Beyond these basic demos, you can also open a putty terminal or some other terminal for a more informative result. After resetting the board the terminal will display the Texas Instruments logo. If this is done in putty instead of some other terminals available you will see this in color. After pressing S3 the temperature demo comes up and the current temperature is displayed. This is done as a temperature in Celsius and a breakdown of reference with the addition or subtraction of some offset 30 Celsius = Ref + 1).

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Figure 3. Demo Software Screen





Hardware Overview

Board gets pretty warm, and this appears to be coming from the onboard FTDI IC. As I do not have a thermal camera my fingers and upper lip are what we're used to narrow down the what was the warm component.

 

Software Overview



Motor Driver

First impressions



Demo Software



Hardware overview



Software Overview



InstaSpin Software



Ease of use



Summery

 





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Anonymous
  • dave323  gsgill112 mattistef

     

    Looking over my kit it is a F28027 and the boosterpack uses a F28027F, I will check if what I have is compatible or not but this might explain some of the issues some of the road testers are having. I wonder if everyone got a F28027 instead of an F28027F. Anyways the lack of documentation for the F28027 demo code is not making it any easier. I have put in my review but is neither complete or anywhere close to my standards of acceptable, but with what TI has delivered I'm not sure to much more is possible.

     

    If it is not possible to do much more with this kit I don't expect or really want E14 sending another one as its been so long since this road test was started even if I only received everything a little over 2 months ago. We will see what can be done and report back. Gurinder as for getting the code to compile and run I was given this link http://e2e.ti.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/171/7776.C2000_5F00_launchpad_5F00_ba… from TI and found it helped with one demo, I still can't get any other demos to run. There is another page that they have pointed me to that may also have some help, I am in the process of going through this too. There may still be a chance to write a decent review about half of the kit at least here is to trying...

     

    http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/C2000_LaunchPad#Tutorials