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View Poll Results: What is your favorite feature of the SD540?
Light Weight 25 20.33%
Low Cost 47 38.21%
Multi-Bank Option 31 25.20%
I do not like this product. 47 38.21%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 123. You may not vote on this poll

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  #151   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 23-12-2015, 16:53
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by aldaeron View Post
After re-reading my posts I think I am not stating clearly enough to both REV and Mindsensors that you need to post appropriate, preferably independent, test data. That is what builds confidence. I believe the major reason there was widespread adoption of the last two new motor controllers was the public and independent testing done by Alpha and Beta teams. You need to replicate this level of testing if you want to get widespread adoption.


For crying out loud - post the data on your website!!



This should also be on your website. Help convince us you have a great new product. As I have noted in this thread and others, your design does look good, just send data to back it up.

Yup, you are right on these points, we have not released enough of our testing data. I will compile it into a format that makes sense and release it ASAP.



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Originally Posted by aldaeron View Post
Here's the deal - you had some great looking products last year, but were unable to deliver them due to a variety of issues (our team was bummed to have had to go elsewhere).
Yes, we have heard this many times this year, and I am really sorry that it happened. Last year was particularly hard for us as a new company with limited cash flow to purchase inventory. When you combine that with a game that was as perfect as you could imagine for our new products it created a shortage.

This year we have re-invested all money made last year in new products and inventory. We have plenty of SPARKs and other products in stock and ready to go for the year. *Obviously there is a chance for huge demand that we can't keep up with, but if that happens we have safeguards in place to help get us back in stock quickly.



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Originally Posted by aldaeron View Post
Great intentions do not necessarily always come through and you should be a little more aware of well-founded concerns that are raised about such key components as motor controllers. Again, providing test data will assuage many of these fears.
What you have said is very true, and we are listening to the concerns. As team mentors ourselves we know and understand the issues deeply as we have seen the same things. That's one of the reasons I know the SPARK is solid, because we tested it the same way that I would want a company to test it as a potential customer. That being said....our test data on the way.

We have also given some controllers to respected members of the community for further testing to get an outside perspective.

Thanks for your perspective and thoughts, I really do appreciate it.

Greg
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Unread 23-12-2015, 17:41
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by Greg Needel View Post
Yes, we have heard this many times this year, and I am really sorry that it happened. Last year was particularly hard for us as a new company with limited cash flow to purchase inventory. When you combine that with a game that was as perfect as you could imagine for our new products it created a shortage.

What you have said is very true, and we are listening to the concerns. As team mentors ourselves we know and understand the issues deeply as we have seen the same things.
I think a lot of people saw what happened and were sympathetic. I also noticed the changes you made to utilize Amazon for shipment of the motor controllers. I have seen all FRC vendors struggle over the years with inventory at various times. You don't know the game and most of the part orders are placed in the span of ~4 weeks. Tough business to be in and my hats off to all of the FRC vendors. Just be wary of what you promise because what I have seen is that the mob remembers these promises and shows up with pitchforks come late January (they also do not notice the asterisks you place with your statements)


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Originally Posted by Greg Needel View Post
Thanks for your perspective and thoughts, I really do appreciate it.
Hopefully they're are coming across as honest and constructive criticism. It is hard to do with black and white text. Ultimately we want better/lighter/cheaper products to use for the season and for vendors to be successful.

Keep up the good work!

-matto-
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Unread 04-01-2016, 00:24
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by philso View Post
Mindsensors - How do the firmware changes for the SD540B (other than removing the undervoltage-lockout safety feature) change it's behaviour relative to the SD540 to account for the increase in efficiency? Has the switching frequency been changed? Have the switching edge rates been changed? ...
I didn't see any response from Mindsensors on this here, so I'll speculate.

There are two contributors to an efficiency loss. The IR drop due to Rds(on) is one and is the contributor most are familiar with. The other is the refresh of the boot capacitor.

To turn on the high-side MOSFETs, the Vgs must be high enough for efficient conduction, but since the source voltage is also that connected to the motor, it means that the gate voltage relative to ground is greater than the battery voltage (by more than 5V, typically). So, the high-side gate drivers use a capacitor as a source of voltage/current and that cap (the boot cap) is periodically refreshed. This means that when driving the motor at 100%, the gate driver cannot actually drive a high-side MOSFET on for 100%, it is more like 99.9%. The 0.1% is enough to refresh the boot cap.

Since the test setup uses a resistive load and RMS multimeters, the refresh will appear like further IR drop. To figure out the refresh component, a scope can be put across the resistive load and the duty cycle measured.

Some newer gate drivers (like the one announced by TI earlier this year) use an integrated charge pump and can keep a boot cap charged without requiring this loss.

So, Mindsensors *could* have updated their firmware to reduce the refresh time/duty cycle and improve efficiency.

Scott
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Unread 04-01-2016, 09:59
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by s1900ahon View Post
I didn't see any response from Mindsensors on this here, so I'll speculate.

There are two contributors to an efficiency loss. The IR drop due to Rds(on) is one and is the contributor most are familiar with. The other is the refresh of the boot capacitor.

To turn on the high-side MOSFETs, the Vgs must be high enough for efficient conduction, but since the source voltage is also that connected to the motor, it means that the gate voltage relative to ground is greater than the battery voltage (by more than 5V, typically). So, the high-side gate drivers use a capacitor as a source of voltage/current and that cap (the boot cap) is periodically refreshed. This means that when driving the motor at 100%, the gate driver cannot actually drive a high-side MOSFET on for 100%, it is more like 99.9%. The 0.1% is enough to refresh the boot cap.

Since the test setup uses a resistive load and RMS multimeters, the refresh will appear like further IR drop. To figure out the refresh component, a scope can be put across the resistive load and the duty cycle measured.

Some newer gate drivers (like the one announced by TI earlier this year) use an integrated charge pump and can keep a boot cap charged without requiring this loss.

So, Mindsensors *could* have updated their firmware to reduce the refresh time/duty cycle and improve efficiency.

Scott
Thanks for your input, Scott. It is interesting to get your perspective as a power electronics professional.

If changing the refresh time will make the MOSFETs saturate properly, they could update the firmware in the original and improve it's performance too. The stated change to make the "B" version was to remove the under-voltage lockout feature which should have no effect on how the MOSFET gates are controlled during "normal" operation.

It would be interesting to see if anyone who has an SD540 or SD540B can put a scope probe on the output. It is possible that the SD540B uses a switching frequency lower than 32.25 kHz to cut the switching losses in half. I would also be interested to see how clean the output waveforms are. I have had to fix inverters where poor internal layout led to excessive voltage surges which led the designers to greatly increase the gate resistance (increasing switching losses and allowing the Miller Capacitance to cause oscillations).
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Unread 04-01-2016, 11:07
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by philso View Post
Thanks for your input, Scott. It is interesting to get your perspective as a power electronics professional.
Ha ha.. I have to LOL on that comment. I'd hardly give myself that attribute. I'm an embedded semiconductor kind of guy (architecture/hardware/software). My experience with power electronics is due to my being employed at Luminary Micro some years ago who built microcontrollers (MCUs) for use in applications such as motor control. Specifically, you can blame me for Jaguar (he ducks as rotten tomatoes are hurled in his direction).

Quote:
If changing the refresh time will make the MOSFETs saturate properly, they could update the firmware in the original and improve it's performance too.
To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that the Cboot voltage was decaying and affecting the Vgs level on the high-side MOSFETs. Actually, the scenario I was thinking about was that the they were over refreshing and therefore incurring an un-necessary drop in efficiency.

The Cboot cap is charged up when the connected terminal (M+ or M-, there is one Cboot for each) is driven low (the low-side MOSFET is turned on). The cap charges through a diode and current limiting resistor. The Cboot charge time is therefore 3-5 RCboot times. But, the firmware in the MCU controls the timing. If you're curious, check out the Jaguar's published schematics.

Quote:
The stated change to make the "B" version was to remove the under-voltage lockout feature which should have no effect on how the MOSFET gates are controlled during "normal" operation.
Yeah, the under voltage would be the VBUS voltage reduced by a divider circuit to an ADC input, being sampled by firmware, and setting a different trip point value or updated software-based filtering to activate exceptional processing. Also a firmware change (likely).

Quote:
It would be interesting to see if anyone who has an SD540 or SD540B can put a scope probe on the output. It is possible that the SD540B uses a switching frequency lower than 32.25 kHz to cut the switching losses in half. I would also be interested to see how clean the output waveforms are. I have had to fix inverters where poor internal layout led to excessive voltage surges which led the designers to greatly increase the gate resistance (increasing switching losses and allowing the Miller Capacitance to cause oscillations).
Agreed. From a pure curiosity perspective, I'd like to see this done for all motor controllers. It would provide some insight into the real power loss (IRds(on)). It is easy to see: connect small resistive load across M+/M-, connect scope to M+ and V-(ground), set output to 100% forward, measure duty cycle and frequency on scope.

Scott
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Unread 04-01-2016, 13:45
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by s1900ahon View Post
Ha ha.. I have to LOL on that comment. I'd hardly give myself that attribute. I'm an embedded semiconductor kind of guy (architecture/hardware/software). My experience with power electronics is due to my being employed at Luminary Micro some years ago who built microcontrollers (MCUs) for use in applications such as motor control. Specifically, you can blame me for Jaguar (he ducks as rotten tomatoes are hurled in his direction).



To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that the Cboot voltage was decaying and affecting the Vgs level on the high-side MOSFETs. Actually, the scenario I was thinking about was that the they were over refreshing and therefore incurring an un-necessary drop in efficiency.

The Cboot cap is charged up when the connected terminal (M+ or M-, there is one Cboot for each) is driven low (the low-side MOSFET is turned on). The cap charges through a diode and current limiting resistor. The Cboot charge time is therefore 3-5 RCboot times. But, the firmware in the MCU controls the timing. If you're curious, check out the Jaguar's published schematics.



Yeah, the under voltage would be the VBUS voltage reduced by a divider circuit to an ADC input, being sampled by firmware, and setting a different trip point value or updated software-based filtering to activate exceptional processing. Also a firmware change (likely).



Agreed. From a pure curiosity perspective, I'd like to see this done for all motor controllers. It would provide some insight into the real power loss (IRds(on)). It is easy to see: connect small resistive load across M+/M-, connect scope to M+ and V-(ground), set output to 100% forward, measure duty cycle and frequency on scope.

Scott

Regardless of the opinions other people have of the Jaguar, you clearly did a decent job with the design of the inverter section. I have seen the results of other embedded designers trying to design a 3-phase inverter for automotive applications. This guy clearly just copied a generic schematic for the inverter and did not know how to minimize the inductance in the circuit or how to bypass the inverter. They were using 1200V devices with a DC supply in the range of 300-400V and were still blowing it up. That start-up never got to market.


It would be interesting to see the output of the motor controllers even with no load connected. Issues with excessive inductance in the controller will show up as large spikes, possibly with abnormally slow voltage rise and fall times.
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Unread 04-01-2016, 14:07
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by s1900ahon View Post
...employed at Luminary Micro some years ago who built microcontrollers (MCUs) for use in applications such as motor control. Specifically, you can blame me for Jaguar (he ducks as rotten tomatoes are hurled in his direction).
Yeah I'm not sure that's fair Scott, that's a bit harsh...
"The first one through the wall always gets bloody." - Moneyball (film)

Before the Jag, CANbus was totally unheard of. And because of the Jag, teams got their first glimpse at what smart motor controllers could do in FRC.

Teams also got exposed to web-based diagnostics through CTRE's 2CAN and Jags. And now the RIO has both web-based diagnostics and CANbus integrated. So I'd say it was a learning curve that benefited several aspects of the control system.
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Unread 04-01-2016, 14:22
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by ozrien View Post
Yeah I'm not sure that's fair Scott, that's a bit harsh...
"The first one through the wall always gets bloody." - Moneyball (film)

Before the Jag, CANbus was totally unheard of. And because of the Jag, teams got their first glimpse at what smart motor controllers could do in FRC.

Teams also got exposed to web-based diagnostics through CTRE's 2CAN and Jags. And now the RIO has both web-based diagnostics and CANbus integrated. So I'd say it was a learning curve that benefited several aspects of the control system.
As far as I am concerned - the problem with the Jaguars was not the concept or even the initial delivery.

The problem with the Jaguars was that once issues started to pop up it was difficult to get either clear support from the community or any one else. Often the list of potential issues that could cause complications was also so large such that the Jaguars never stood a chance.

Take CAN as a fine example. Yes there was CAN support from both the cRIO control system and the Jaguar but there were all sorts of issues lurking around in there. CAN itself is extremely robust and easily safe to use in vehicle applications.

I still have all the FRC11 Jaguars in my storage and frankly I still consider them usable as long as one is prepared to explore the intricacy. That's the killer right there - planning on the intricacy.

Even if my idea of building a Makerspace with FRC gear doesn't play out - at least now I have both an AndyMark drivetrain and a custom drivetrain to run tests with uncommited to the FRC competition itself. Once the Jaguars started giving FRC11 trouble it was a mess for us. There was not enough uncommitted hardware to do any testing either just for FRC11 or just for the sake of feeding results to the community. So that intricacy was bad news for the Jaguars because we could toss Victors onto what we had those years and it ran. At some point we just had to toss the Jaguars aside to keep moving forward.

Last edited by techhelpbb : 04-01-2016 at 14:30.
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Unread 05-01-2016, 10:49
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by ozrien View Post
Yeah I'm not sure that's fair Scott, that's a bit harsh...
"The first one through the wall always gets bloody." - Moneyball (film)
True.

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Before the Jag, CANbus was totally unheard of. And because of the Jag, teams got their first glimpse at what smart motor controllers could do in FRC.
Glimpse for some, taste for others, a meal for very few. Rarely does improvement occur when one iteration is allowed (we made improvements to the Jaguar from Grey to Black version, but not significant enough to address the major issues). Believe it or not, we had concepts in mind for an SRX-like design back in 2012, but we couldn't convince TI to allow us to follow on. Well, it probably wound't have sold for what the SRX does had it been allowed.

Anyhow, back to the subject of the thread at hand: I need to find where I put some old power resistors...
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Unread 05-01-2016, 11:20
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by s1900ahon View Post
True.



Glimpse for some, taste for others, a meal for very few. Rarely does improvement occur when one iteration is allowed (we made improvements to the Jaguar from Grey to Black version, but not significant enough to address the major issues). Believe it or not, we had concepts in mind for an SRX-like design back in 2012, but we couldn't convince TI to allow us to follow on. Well, it probably wound't have sold for what the SRX does had it been allowed.

Anyhow, back to the subject of the thread at hand: I need to find where I put some old power resistors...
I take it you were involved with the design for the Jaguar... We were one of the few teams who adopted them and the 2CAN (both versions) and stuck with them. We really enjoyed using them and when conformal coating was added they got even better because we quit frying two per year. We also lost a few from failed firmware updates. One of them I managed to recover using one of the TI launchpads in the kit.

Can you explain the decision behind using RJ11 as the data connector though? I've always wondered about it. Was it just a convenient form factor? Were any other options ever discussed or considered?
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Unread 05-01-2016, 12:55
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by marshall View Post
Can you explain the decision behind using RJ11 as the data connector though? I've always wondered about it. Was it just a convenient form factor? Were any other options ever discussed or considered?
There were other options discussed at the time. We started with different CAN standards (DB9 comes to mind, so does a 2-row square pin header). But we ended up with the 6P4C modular connector. The form factor seemed convenient, the tools could be found cheaply, the parts were available from many places, etc.

I much prefer the current solution provided by the PDP, PCM, roboRIO, etc. The connection is more reliable, no tools needed (finger), and the foot print could fit inside that of a single 6P4C connector (2x2). Mike and Omar have done a great job.
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Unread 05-01-2016, 14:31
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

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Originally Posted by s1900ahon View Post
There were other options discussed at the time. We started with different CAN standards (DB9 comes to mind, so does a 2-row square pin header). But we ended up with the 6P4C modular connector. The form factor seemed convenient, the tools could be found cheaply, the parts were available from many places, etc.

I much prefer the current solution provided by the PDP, PCM, roboRIO, etc. The connection is more reliable, no tools needed (finger), and the foot print could fit inside that of a single 6P4C connector (2x2). Mike and Omar have done a great job.
Indeed they have. Thanks for the background info!
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Unread 19-06-2016, 18:21
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

Now that this season is over, I would like to ask if any teams used this controller this year and what they thought of it.
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Unread 20-06-2016, 09:29
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

I mentor team #6194. We used the SD540B and had great results. The controllers gave out great power. We qualified for the Cheseapeake District Championship in Maryland as Rookie Team. We will use this controller again next season.
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Unread 20-06-2016, 13:35
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Re: SD540 Motor Controller

Team 540 also used the controllers this year and they were very successful for us. We had 7 controllers on our robot for the drivetrain, flywheel shooter, pickup mechanism, and manipulator arm and each used the SD540B motor controller. We used three single controllers and two sets of double controllers (the 2 controller bank). Overall, they were good and we were able to go all the was to St Louis with our successes and made one of our best robots in team history!
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