RC QUICKCAL UPDATE UPDATE
RC QUICKCAL UPDATE SOFTWARE

Instead of making a separate board just for the motor controller, I decided to make one big board that will house the motor controller, the C2000 LP (sort of like a 'BoosterPack' where LP will plug onto the board), and the RF module. Last thing, the PCB layout I shared 2 posts ago has been put off for now. The packaging doesn't allow that, and the Piccolo is soldered on the board, whereas the MSP430 comes in DIP packaging which you can pry out and use on an external circuit (like I did in my Car Trip Computer Project). MSP430G2553 runs at 16-20 MHz tops and the C2000 Piccolo runs at 60 MHz! The only down side, I would say, is when you are done with experimenting and prototyping, you can't just take out the Piccolo microcontroller from your Launchpad and place it on a Perf Board, or a breadboard. Since TI seems to have increased their prices for the MSP430 Launchpad, for another $8 ($18 in total) you can get the C2000 Launchpad and it very very capable.

I actually have some experience with it because I used a much more powerful C2000 working for Buckeye Current and we implemented SYS/BIOS on our motorcycle. This is a real-time operating system and it is not too bad to use. The other reason is that it natively supports TI's RTOS which they call SYS/BIOS. This is one of the 2 reasons I chose to use the C2000 Launchpad in my project. On top of that, it has many other useful peripherals such as a EPWM peripheral. It runs at 60 MHz, and it is capable of UART, I2C, SPI. This launchpad, which I believe is the second Launchpad that TI released, uses the C2000-F28027 Piccolo Microcontroller.

More about the microcontroller side of the project: This is the first project that I am building that is using TI's C2000 Launchpad Microcontroller. But I connected up the motor to it, and connected the two motor controller input pins to my microcontroller and applied a PWM signal, and it worked!!

RC QUICKCAL UPDATE SOFTWARE

I actually started on the software also, I will talk more about that later on. I was so surprised but it 'just' worked!! I didn't have to tinker with it or anything, I just went by the design and it worked. As soon as they arrived, I popped one on the breadboard and constructed the circuit that I shared as a design drawing 2 posts ago. I was actually waiting on some 2-to-4 decoders and I received them almost 2 weeks ago.

RC QUICKCAL UPDATE UPDATE

In my last update post, I pointed out that I was waiting on one last part to complete the prototype. Here are some more updates on the project.

Rc quickcal update