TI Rolls Industry’s First On-Chip Solution for Analog, Digital Position Sensors

A new system-on-chip solution enables developers to more easily incorporate digital and analog position sensors, thereby simplifying the development of industrial robots, elevators, CNC machines, material conveyance systems, and servo applications of virtually all types.

Charles Murray

January 28, 2016

3 Min Read
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A new system-on-chip (SoC) solution enables developers to more easily incorporate digital and analog position sensors, thereby simplifying the development of industrial robots, elevators, CNC machines, material conveyance systems, and servo applications of virtually all types.

Texas Instruments, which makes the new SoC solution, says the technology eliminates the need for engineers to add special hardware for the purpose of interfacing with multiple types of sensors. By eliminating the need for those extra parts, engineers could cut test and development time of their new systems by months. “It saves them time and money,” Brian Fortman, industrial drives and automation marketing manager for TI, told Design News. “Why should they worry about adding those extra parts when it can all be done for them?”

Two new TI MCUs will support DesignDrive Position Manager technology. The technology will enable developers to more easily incorporate analog and digital position sensors.
(Source: Texas Instruments)

TI’s new solution is made up of two parts: Two new microcontrollers (MCUs), combined with the company’s new DesignDrive Position Manager technology. The Position Manager technology enables developers to interface to both digital and analog position sensors. The two new MCUs –- TMS320F28379D and TMS320F28379S -– are the first to support it.

TI’s SoC solution could become an important tool for industrial machinery developers because it eliminates the need for them to add hardware -- such as analog-to-digital (A/D) converters, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and extra microcontrollers -- for the purpose of interfacing with multiple types of sensors. By doing so, it enables them to cut cost and development time, while freeing up board space, TI says.

[Learn more electronics trends and developments at Pacific Design & Manufacturing, Feb. 9-11, at the Anaheim Convention Center.]

”The key is that we can reduce their need for external components,” Fortman told us. “People like that. It means they don’t have to buy as many components.”

Today, Fortman said, the interfacing process can be tortuously long and complex. Development time can take up to two weeks, while system-level test can drain another one to two months. In contrast, MCUs employing Position Manager would handle those tasks up front because the MCUs incorporate the functionality to interface with EnDat2.2, BISS-C, resolver-type, and SIN/COS sensors.

”Today, engineers have to do most of that interfacing on their own,” Fortman said.

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TI is targeting the new technology at a wide variety of industrial development applications, including CNC machinery, AC inverter drives, material conveyance, and precision manufacturing. Printed circuit board construction and wafer handling systems are examples of two applications well-suited to the new technology, Fortman added.

By employing the new solution, developers can spend their time on more important jobs, TI said. “Now, you can put your engineers on tasks that really differentiate your product,” Fortman said.

Senior technical editor Chuck Murray has been writing about technology for 31 years. He joined Design News in 1987, and has covered electronics, automation, fluid power, and autos.

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About the Author

Charles Murray

Charles Murray is a former Design News editor and author of the book, Long Hard Road: The Lithium-Ion Battery and the Electric Car, published by Purdue University Press. He previously served as a DN editor from 1987 to 2000, then returned to the magazine as a senior editor in 2005. A former editor with Semiconductor International and later with EE Times, he has followed the auto industry’s adoption of electric vehicle technology since 1988 and has written extensively about embedded processing and medical electronics. He was a winner of the Jesse H. Neal Award for his story, “The Making of a Medical Miracle,” about implantable defibrillators. He is also the author of the book, The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer, published by John Wiley & Sons in 1997. Murray’s electronics coverage has frequently appeared in the Chicago Tribune and in Popular Science. He holds a BS in engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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