Customization of Controller to Drive a Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM)

Abstract

Teknatool International Ltd is a company which specializes in the manufacturing and exporting of hobbyist wood working lathes which utilize their patented Digital-Variable Reluctance (DVR) motor technology. The objective of the project is to develop a customizable Human/Machine Interface (HMI) unit for the DVR motor system. The DVR motor system uses a switched reluctance motor (SRM) controlled by the motor control board, which operates by receiving inputs from the HMI device and rotational sensors. The HMI device uses a keypad to receive user inputs which are processed by the microcontroller to control the motor control board. The custom user interface source code is to be created and programmed into the microcontroller using the program Keil uVision in the embedded C programming language. A custom source code was written to emulate the functions of the original HMI interface, the communication functions were then implemented to allow the HMI board to communicate with the motor control board. The source code solution which was produced closely resembles the functions of the original HMI interface and was able to fully control the SRM by sending the correctly defined USART messages to the motor control board. A PC software program was created using Visual C# to allow the HMI to be easily altered without the need for the user to understand and modify source code. The software allows the users to make modifications to a number of parameters to the user interface. The software was integrates with Keil uVision to compile and download code into the flash memory. The PC software is able to successfully program the HMI board with operational interface software. A new prototype HMI board is currently under development by Teknatool International which contains additional hardware features compared to the current version of the HMI board; these features include an accelerometer unit, USB/CAN port, wireless receiver unit, and a set of reserved I/O ports for future use. Due to time constraints only the basic accelerometer function has been created in the software interface, however upon completion the new HMI board will provide an increased level of safety for the DVR motor system.