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Arduino Simple Field Oriented Control (FOC) project

We live in very exciting times 😃! BLDC motors are entering the hobby community more and more and many great projects have already emerged leveraging their far superior dynamics and power capabilities. BLDC motors have numerous advantages over regular DC motors but they have one big disadvantage, the complexity of control. Even though it has become relatively easy to design and manufacture PCBs and create our own hardware solutions for driving BLDC motors the proper low-cost solutions are yet to come. One of the reasons for this is the apparent complexity of writing the BLDC driving algorithms, Field oriented control (FOC) being an example of one of the most efficient ones. The solutions that can be found on-line are almost exclusively very specific for certain hardware configuration and the microcontroller architecture used. Additionally, most of the efforts at this moment are still channeled towards the high-power applications of the BLDC motors and proper low-cost and low-power FOC supporting boards are very hard to find today and even may not exist.
Therefore this is an attempt to:

• 🎯 Demystify FOC algorithm and make a robust but simple Arduino library: Arduino SimpleFOClibrary
  • Support as many motor + sensor + current sense + driver + mcu combinations out there
• 🎯 Develop a modular FOC supporting BLDC driver boards:
  • Low-power gimbal driver (<5Amps) : Arduino SimpleFOCShield .
  • Medium-power BLDC driver (<30Amps): Arduino SimpleFOCPowerShield .
  • See also @byDagor's fully-integrated ESP32 based board: Dagor Brushless Controller

NEW RELEASE 📢: SimpleFOClibrary v2.2.1 see release

• Sensor class init bugfix #121
• Voltage/current limit handling bugs #118
• Added the new motion control interface to the commander see docs
  • New target setting - possible to set the position, velocity and torque target at once
  • Separated the motion control interface from full motor callback - only motion control and torque control type, enable disable and target setting
• New MCU support see docs
  • NRF52 series mcus support by @Polyphe
  • esp32 arduino package transfer to v2.0.1+ - helpful PR#149 by samguns
  • Initial support for esp32s2 and esp32s3 - separation of the esp32 mcpwm and led implementation
• Generic sensor class - to implement a new sensor only implement one function see docs

Arduino SimpleFOClibrary v2.2.1

<iframe class="youtube" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y5kLeqTc6Zk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> This video demonstrates the Simple FOC library basic usage, electronic connections and shows its capabilities.

Features

• Arduino compatible:
  • Arduino library code
  • Arduino Library Manager integration
• Open-Source: Full code and documentation available on github
• Easy to setup and configure:
  • Easy hardware configuration
  • Easy tuning the control loops
• Modular:
  • Supports as many sensors, BLDC motors and driver boards as possible
  • Supports multiple MCU architectures:
    • Arduino: UNO, MEGA, any board with ATMega328 chips
    • STM32 boards: Nucleo, Bluepill ...
    • ESP32
    • Teensy boards
• Plug & play: Arduino SimpleFOCShield

Arduino SimpleFOCShield v2.0.4

<iframe class="youtube" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G5pbo0C6ujE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Features

• Plug & play: In combination with Arduino SimpleFOClibrary - github
• Low-cost: Price of €15 - Check the pricing
• In-line current sensing: Up to 3Amps/5Amps bidirectional
  • configurable: 3.3Amps - 3.3V adc, 5Amps - 5V adc
• Integrated 8V regulator:
  • Enable/disable by soldering pads
• Max power 120W - max current 5A, power-supply 12-35V
  • Designed for Gimbal motors with the internal resistance >10 Ωs.
• Stackable: running 2 motors in the same time
• Encoder/Hall sensors interface: Integrated 3.3kΩ pullups (configurable)
• I2C interface: Integrated 4.7kΩ pullups (configurable)
• Configurable pinout: Hardware configuration - soldering connections
• Arduino headers: Arduino UNO, Arduino MEGA, STM32 Nucleo boards...
• Open Source: Fully available fabrication files - how to make it yourself

If you are interested in this board as a product, find more information on this link: Arduino SimpleFOCShield

Alternative FOC supporting projects

These are just a few of the alternative FOC supporting projects which provide hardware and software solutions.

Odrive	Trinamic	Infineon	FOC-Arduino-Brushless
✔️ Open Source	❌ Open Source	✔️ Open Source(recently)	✔️ Open Source
✔️Simple to use	✔️ Simple to use	✔️Simple to use	❌ Simple to use
❌ Low cost ($100)	❌ Low cost ($100)	✔️Low cost ($40)	✔️ Low cost
❌ Low power (>50A)	✔️ Low power	✔️ Low power	✔️ Low power
❌ Stepper support	❌ Stepper support	❌ Stepper support	❌ Stepper support