PIC Based Speed Controller using PIC16C54

Introduction

Real world applications often call for controlling small to medium sized DC motors from digital circuits. For smaller motors it is usually economically infeasible to buy a commercial speed controller as the cost of the controller will far outstrip the cost of the motor itself. The PIC’s high speed, low cost, and low power requirements lend it to being an inexpensive “smart chip” controller for DC motors.

Background

Many modern speed controllers for DC motors use a technique called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to control the speed of the motor. Using a switching device such as a power transistor or enhancement mode MOSFET, power is switched on an off rapidly to the motor. The natural inductance and resistance of the motor acts as a low pass filter and makes the effective voltage seen by the motor to be the average value of the voltage over time. By varying the duty cycle (width) of this switched voltage, the effective average voltage can be lowered (narrow width pulse) or raised (wide pulse). This produces the effect of a linear change in voltage, however since the switching device is either off or in saturation it is never required to dissipate too much power internally. This increases the overall efficiency of the system as well.

The other half of the problem is how to tell the motor controller what speed you would like the motor to be set to. Any of a number of schemes would work, however the Radio Control (R/C) community has a standard for controlling servos that is particularly apt for this application. This standard uses a pulse, of variable width, repeated periodically to specify the “position” of the servo. The position variable in the servo can take on values from “full retract” to “full extension” and any position in between. Where the servo is positioned is determined by the width of this incoming pulse. In this application we will use this same technique, however rather than full retract or full extension our controller sets the speed of the motor it is controlling from full reverse to full forward.

The control pulse is defined by the width that represents “neutral,” or in the case of the motor controller the width that represents “stop,” and the change in width or delta that will yield full travel. A typical value for neutral on a Futaba R/C servo is 1520 uS, however for me it was easier to use 1500 uS. Depending on the servo, the “maximum” and “minimum” position will be some delta plus or minus this neutral position. On a Futaba S143 servo that I tested, these values were 700 uS for the minimum or full retract position and 2300 uS for maximum or full extension position. Generally they land near the 1000 uS for a minimum pulse width and 2000uS as a maximum pulse width. Given the timing constants of the program, this program responds to pulses that are between 860 uS and 2140 uS. The exact relationship is shown in Figure 1.

The last piece of this specifcation is how often one needs to send the control pulse to the servo. Again using the Futaba servo as a reference it is about every 20 mS or 50 times a second. Thus, the motor controller keeps the motors “on” at the current setting until either a new pulse arrives with the same or different width, or until approximately 20 mS has passed without seeing a new pulse.

How It Works

The hardware for this project is straight forward. Referring to the schematic shown in Figure 2. “The Motor Controller Schematic” you will see that the input from the controller is fed into bit RB0. Port A of the PIC is connected to an opto-isolator chip. The purpose of this chip is to shield the digital side of the circuit from the electronic noise generated by the motors being switched. Further, it allows the motors to be easily run from a separate, and potentially much higher supply voltage. Resistors RP1a through RP1d are four elements of a 470 ohm resistor pack. There use is to imit the current in the opto-isolator LEDs to less than 10mA. The other side of the opto-isolator is used to drive the power transistors. Q1 and Q2 in the schematic are TIP 125 PNP power darlingtons and Q3 and Q4 are TIP 120 NPN power darlingtons. Resistors R1 through R4 are chosen to create a current of greater than 6mA through the bases of the transistors. The current can be greater, but should never be less than 6 mA.

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