The requirements for electronic motor control in household electronic devices, as well as the industrial and automotive markets, have promoted the demand for MCUs with advanced motor control peripherals.

    In the home appliance market, motor control with improved performance is required to meet government planning standards, such as the Energy Star Program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which promotes manufacturers to launch high-performance home appliances. Washing machines are an important field of high-performance motor control. The direct drive washing machine eliminates the transmission belt between the motor shaft and the washing machine agitator, allowing for different speeds and agitator modes.

    A manufacturer‘s completely redesigned washing machine reduces electricity consumption by 38% and water consumption by 17% compared to traditional washing machines. The motor control MCU adjusts the power of the motor based on the amount and type of laundry. However, home appliance users are still sensitive to the initial purchase price, so manufacturers must continuously reduce their development and production costs to make more advanced appliances acceptable to more consumers.

    In home appliances, the 8-bit MCU designed specifically for low-cost motor control applications integrates functions that minimize additional devices. Under the conditions of motor PWM, fault safe clock monitor, and highly reliable flash memory on the circuit board, the MCU simplifies the design of home appliance motor control and can achieve low-cost goals.

    In industrial applications, the cost of electricity and the downtime of assembly operations can reduce the profits of manufacturers. An industrial example of how the control of motor performance improvement directly affects efficiency and revenue is to replace the valve in an industrial water pump with a variable speed (VSD) system based on MCU.

    For the pump or fan, the power consumption is proportional to the cube root of the shaft speed. When the shaft speed decreases by 10%, the flow decreases by 10%, and the power consumption decreases by 27%. If the speed is reduced by 20%, the power consumption will be reduced by 49%. By using MCU variable speed motor control instead of constant speed motor valves to reduce flow, it has been proven that energy savings of 25-40% can be achieved for centrifugal pumps, fans, and hair dryers in industrial applications.

    The benefits of industrial applications are evident, as the use of MCU driven variable speed motor control relies on other factors such as flexibility and reliability - these factors can avoid downtime caused by faults or maintenance. MCU with flash memory and EEPROM provides the flexibility to meet industrial user requirements through reprogrammable features when upgrades or control program changes are required. The MCU with 16KB flash memory and 256B EEPROM provides sufficient memory in an 8-bit MCU to handle many changes that may be required in industrial environments. Equally important, Microchip‘s flash memory adopts PMOS electronic erasable unit processing technology, which generally has a data storage unit capable of withstanding 1 million erase/write cycles, and data can maintain performance for over 40 years.

    The existing automotive motor applications include using motors to open and close windows and doors, as well as positioning the vehicle seat. Due to their low frequency of use, these applications are not sensitive to low efficiency, but high utilization applications, such as passenger temperature environmental control and engine box fans, continuously consume limited electrical energy from cars. The motor controlled MCU allows the environmental control fan to operate at a speed that maintains a comfortable temperature, reducing noise and power consumption.

    In many cases, the motor control MCU must use a Control Area Network (CAN) or Local Interconnection Network (LAN) to connect to the car network. For body electronics, low-cost LIN protocols are now used to reduce overall system costs. In some MCU series, a USART module that supports LIN1.2 can be found, providing automatic wake-up and baud detection at the start bit.

    As control algorithms become increasingly complex in all segmented markets, the performance of digital motor controllers has risen from MCU to DSP level. Digital Signal Controllers (DSC) bring higher performance and affordable, design engineer friendly MCU technology for more mature motor control designs, including those with vector control applications. DSC operates at a speed of up to 30MIPS, with up to 144KB of flash memory and integrated peripherals dedicated to motor control, enabling more advanced and new motor control applications. By using electronic motor control based on DSP and DSC, the home appliance industry and automobiles not only have higher work efficiency and provide more functions, but also have an acceptable price.