Hall effect sensors not just for Taranis Gimbals but for ESC integrated motors?

[makattack]

An interesting development from TI:

http://www.ti.com/ww/en/mcu/instaspin/instaspin-quadcopter.shtml

It sounds like they have two designs Instaspin-FOC and Instaspin-Motion. Sensorless and one using Hall Effect sensors to detect accurate motor positioning for better control. Maybe use 3 phase brushless motors instead of stepper motors for 3D printers / CNC's, etc?

Kind of funny how they use plush esc's for comparison.

http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDA-00916?k...h=instaspin esc&tisearch=Search-EN-Everything

 

[willsonman]

This is truly interesting! I've always wondered if I could MAKE my own ESCs but this is an entire new level. I wonder how you could increase the current capability, as I'm no electrical engineer.

 

[Craftydan]

Making your own ESC is doable -- the earliest brushless ESCs for model aviation were designed by model aviation hobbyists to drive motors scavenged from CD Rom drives -- and most ESCs these days are minor tweaks on tweaked designs, and fundamentally aren't that complex . . . but DIY reliably? less than what they sell for? hard metrics to beat these days on a small production scale.

I get that TI is trying to break into the drone industry, but this looks like a solution in search of a problem. They've replaced the ATMEL or SiLabs controller with one of theirs, created a proprietary ROM (with a licensable control interface ) and built . . .

. . . an overpriced, oversized, heavily licensed, first generation KISS ESC.

KISS has been doing 32 bit sinusoidal control for years. They made their name on it. Motors even *SOUND* better on a KISS ESC. While their hardware design has been . . . troublesome at times, they provided a complete design and their performance has been unparalleled for it . . . and they've had several generations of iterations to improve against . . . using non-TI parts. TI is providing a processor core, code to run on it and a proof-of-concept design.

I get it -- TI is trying to sell processors, but they've never been friendly to the electronics hobbyist. Because of this, they haven't had much of an inroad with the emerging drone market since the technology is emerging out of the hobbyist realm (where the Atmel and SILabs ARE friendly to the hobbyist, so their processors get picked as the core hardware -- Way to go TI! ).

What they are providing is not unique: "buy our chips as a core and we *MIGHT* be able to give you KISS level performance . . . eventually"