Dear Sir/Madam

Beside automotive electronics industrial control is the most important market for electronics in Germany. The related exhibitions Hanover Fair in April and PCIM in May will prove the importance of industrial control as well as this newsletter. Enjoy!

Wolfgang Patelay
Technical Editor, EPN

At Glance, in this issue

1. Products News 2. Articles 3. Design Tips 4. Book of the Month 5. Competition

1| Product News

COM-Express Modules (Congatec)
The Conga-B945 high-performance COM-Express module has Intel Core Duo technology and dual-channel memory support. It features 2x2GHz processing speeds and 2Mbytes L2 cache. PCI-Express, Serial ATA and Gigabit Ethernet I/Os multiply overall system performance.
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All-Round View Industrial LCDs (Sharp Electronics)
Measuring 26.4cm and 30.7cm in diagonal respectively, the LQ104V1DW02 and LQ121S1LW01 industrial displays feature particularly wide horizontal and vertical viewing angles (160° and 170° for the respective displays).
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19" Rack (Elma)
In addition to VME systems, the Systemkit Type 12K can incorporate VME64x and CompactPCI, with simultaneous rear I/O option. The rack has been designed for recessed mounting. A ventilation unit can be installed in the lower, larger section of the unit, for optimized thermal management.
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Motor Control Kit (NEC Electronics)
The MC-LVKIT starter kit is designed to support NEC Electronics' range of 8- and 32-bit motor-control-specific microcontrollers. It allows designers to demonstrate and evaluate the CPU and motor-control functions of 78K0 (µPD78F0714) and V850ES/IK1 (µPD70F3329) MCUs.
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2| Articles

ASSP Technology for Industrial Motion Control
For many years, the approach to designing drive and control electronics has remained essentially unchanged. The hardware architecture typically includes a standard microcontroller or DSP; custom logic to provide the decoder inputs and motor outputs; analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters; and analogue circuitry to drive the rotor and stator currents. The article by Andreas Heldwein from AMI Semiconductor looks at how single-chip solutions become a viable alternative.
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Motion-SPM in Mini-DIP Targets High Efficiency
The terms "energy-saving" and "quiet-running" are becoming very important in the world of variable-speed motor drives. For low-power motor control, there are increasing demands for compactness, built-in control, and lower overall-cost. An important consideration, in justifying the use of inverters in these applications, is to optimise the total-cost-performance ratio of the overall drive system. In other words, the systems have to be less noisy, more efficient, smaller and lighter, more advanced in function and more accurate in control with a very low cost. Daewoong Chung and Junbae Lee from Fairchild Semiconductor describe in their article a new series of compact, highfunctionality, and high-efficiency power semiconductor devices called "Motion-SPM in Mini-DIP".
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3| Design Tips

PSoC microcontroller and LVDT measure position
In contrast with conventional microcontrollers, Cypress Semiconductor’s PSoC microcontrollers include user-configurable logic and analog blocks that simplify generation and measurement of ac signals. PSoC devices have the unusual feature of being able to generate analog signals without demanding continuous CPU attention. The PSoC’s flexible analog and digital blocks can drive an LVDT and measure its outputs without requiring any external circuitry. The Design Idea by Sigurd Peterson from Sig3 Consulting shows the function of the LVDT interface.
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Two-channel audio amplifier drives stepper motor
Although relatively expensive, monofilar-wound, bipolar stepper motors provide strong torque for a given physical size. However, each of the motor’s two windings requires eight driving transistors connected in groups of four in an H-bridge configuration. Each transistor must withstand and quickly recover from overloads and short-circuit conditions, and a driver must consequently include complex and large discrete-component protective circuitry. As an alternative, the Design Idea by Phill Leyva and Bill Quach from Maxim Integrated Products shows a motor-driver circuit based on Maxim’s MAX 9715, a tiny, surface-mount, 2.8W Class D audio amplifier, which typically drives 4 or 8O speakers.
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4| Book of The Month

Neural and Fuzzy Logic Control of Drives and Power Systems, by Marcian N Ciresta et al
The authors guide readers quickly and concisely through the complex topics of neural networks, fuzzy logic, mathematical modelling of electrical machines, power systems control and VHDL design. Unlike the academic monographs that have previously been published on each of these subjects, this book combines them and is based round case studies of systems analysis, control strategies, design, simulation and implementation.
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5| Competition

Software- and Hardware-Development Solution for the STR7 MCU
The RKitPSTR750 professional kit from Raisonance was developed in collaboration with STMicroelectronics to offer a complete, flexible, and affordable software- and hardware-development solution for STR7 (ARM7-based) applications. This month, EPN has three kits worth 750 Euros each to give away.
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