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Checklist for Heads of Development: When Does External Motor Controller Consulting Make Sense?
As head of development you carry the risk: schedules, quality, costs and – very visibly – drive behaviour in front of customers. Most of the time your own team can handle it. But there are phases where external motor controller consulting removes bottlenecks, de-risks decisions and lets your engineers focus on the right work. This checklist helps you spot those points. Who this checklist is for Heads of development and CTOs responsible for electric drive systems and motor controllers. Project leads facing critical milestones with limited internal bandwidth or experience.... Read more...
Field Data Logging for Motor Controllers: How to Capture the Right Signals
Most tricky motor-controller problems don’t happen in the lab. They show up once in a while at a customer site – under just the wrong combination of load, temperature, supply and user behaviour. Without field data logging, you are guessing. With it, you can see exactly what the controller saw in the seconds before an issue. Why field data logging matters for motor controllers Reproducing rare faults in the lab becomes much easier. FOC tuning and protection decisions are based on real usage, not assumptions. Product teams get hard evidence... Read more...
Drop Test Simulation for Electronics Enclosures: When Real-World Drop Tests Aren’t Enough
Dropping a prototype onto concrete is a brutally honest test: either it survives or it cracks. But real-world drop tests are expensive, slow – and they don’t tell you why something failed or where your design is running on razor-thin margins. That is where drop test simulation for electronics enclosures starts to pay off. What this article covers Where physical drop tests work well – and where they run out of insight. What drop test simulation can add for electronics housings and drive systems. When it makes economic sense to invest... Read more...
Hardware-in-the-Loop vs Lab Bench: When Does HIL Testing Pay Off?
For many electric drive projects, “proper testing” still means a bench supply, a real motor, some loads – and a lot of lab time. Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) promises repeatable scenarios, virtual loads and better coverage. But HIL also costs money and engineering effort. So when does it actually pay off? What we mean by “lab bench” and “HIL” in this article Lab bench: real inverter + real motor + physical load, tested manually or with simple scripting. HIL: real controller hardware (often STM32-based) connected to a real-time simulator that emulates motor,... Read more...
From Prototype to Series: A Maturity Model for Electric Drive Systems
Getting a motor to spin on the bench is easy. Building a drive system that survives production, field use and updates for years is something else. This maturity model shows the key steps from “it works in my lab” to “we ship and maintain this across a fleet”. What this maturity model is (and is not) It is a practical checklist for electric drive systems: power stage, motor, control firmware and mechanics. It is not tied to a single MCU – but many examples assume STM32-based motor control. It is... Read more...
Secure Bootloader Architectures for STM32: Signatures, Anti-Replay and Recovery Paths
Once your STM32 devices are in the field, every firmware update becomes a security decision: who is allowed to run code on this hardware, and what happens if an update is interrupted or malicious? A secure bootloader architecture adds signatures, anti-replay and clear recovery paths on top of your existing update flow. What this article focuses on Designing a secure boot path for STM32 (not a specific library or vendor tool). Using signatures and key management to ensure only trusted firmware runs. Preventing replay of old images and defining clean... Read more...
Dual-Slot and Rollback Strategies for STM32 Firmware: How to Avoid Bricked Devices
Firmware updates are great – until one fails halfway and turns a working product into a brick. Dual-slot and rollback strategies on STM32 make sure your devices always have a safe image to fall back to, even if power is lost mid-update or a new build has a hidden bug. When you should care about dual-slot and rollback You update STM32 firmware in the field (service tool, mobile app, over a bus or remotely). Devices are hard or expensive to access once deployed (industrial, mobility, tools, drives). A bricked device... Read more...
A Practical STM32 FOC Tuning Checklist for Stable Motor Control
Field-oriented control on STM32 can look fine on paper and in block diagrams – but the real question is: does the drive feel stable, predictable and repeatable across its whole operating range? This article gives you a concrete tuning process you can follow step by step. Before you start: what “good” looks like Current follows its reference quickly and smoothly. Speed control is predictable, without hunting or long tails. Start-up and low-speed behaviour feels controlled, not “fragile”. Protection intervenes when needed – but not all the time. If your STM32... Read more...
Why Your FOC Drive Sounds Noisy – 7 Common Mistakes in STM32 Motor Controllers
Your FOC drive runs, but does it feel solid, quiet and predictable across the full operating range? This checklist walks through the key steps we use when we stabilise STM32-based FOC drives for OEM projects – from timing and current loops to speed control, protection and logging. What you should have in place before tuning A working STM32-based FOC implementation that can spin the motor. Basic lab setup: power supply, load, current probe or shunt measurement, oscilloscope/logger. Motor and inverter parameters (at least approximate): Rs, Ls, pole pairs, max current,... Read more...
STM32 Android-USB-Firmware-Updates: CDC vs. DFU – Wann sollte was verwendet werden?
STM32 Android-USB-Firmware-Updates: CDC vs. DFU – Wann sollte was verwendet werden?
Firmware-Updates: CDC vs DFU – sicher & reproduzierbar Firmware-Updates sind unvermeidbar. Wenn Ihr STM32-Gerät über USB angebunden ist und Sie eine Android-Begleit-App ausliefern, wählen Sie in der Praxis zwischen einem... Read more...
STM32-Motorsteuerung: Eine praktische Checkliste für die ADC/PWM-Synchronisation
STM32-Motorsteuerung: Eine praktische Checkliste für die ADC/PWM-Synchronisation
Wenn FOC „laut“ oder instabil wirkt: Timing synchronisieren Problem: Häufig liegt es am Timing: Der ADC tastet die Phasenströme nicht zum richtigen Zeitpunkt relativ zur PWM ab. Mit dieser Checkliste... Read more...