PC supported motor drive controller

This paper presents a laboratory prototype of the motor drive controller with a stress on user interface. For proper operation of the motor drive system certain parameters have to be set-up. Usually interaction between the human and motor drive controller is accomplished using an embedded keyboard and display. Usually there are several menus and every parameter is accessible with a corresponding code. Because PCs are available everywhere, the authors decided to implement the user interface on a PC running under the MS Windows operating system. The main benefit of such an interface is a simplified parameter setup. The PC and controller are connected with an RS232 cable. Parameter set-up can be downloaded to the controller, uploaded from the controller, saved into file and loaded from it. Besides parameter management, the user interface makes it possible to display selected variables and plot online time responses. There are also functions for parameter identification of the machine. Because the program in a motor drive controller is stored in the FLASH memory and hardware supports in-circuit programming, another function that supports firmware update was added. This way the software update is very simple and program customizing for specific requirements can be done easily.