Power H Mini: Open Source Full H Bridge 12A DC Motor Driver  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: cdoerfler
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 10:00:37 pm
content: Hello everybody. My company, SAM Controllers, has developed a full H bridge 12A DC motor driver using the VNH7100AS from ST Microelectronics Datasheet:https://www.st.com/resource/en/datasheet/vnh7100as.pdfThe Power H Mini is a robust DC motor full H bridge driver that is useful for a variety of applications. With simple two wire control and PWM, this is a plug and play driver that ensures smoother movement of motors in each direction with complete active coupling for accuracy during precision movement. An extremely low internal resistance for the final stage provides high efficiency, low heat dissipation, and extreme recuperation of energy.This driver provides a lot of flexibility for custom DC motor applications. It is designed for full bridge control with a single motor, for two motors to be controlled with two half bridges or for three motors to be controlled with mechanically dependent configurations. For many usage scenarios up to 5A, a heat sink can be avoided or significantly reduced.In addition, this driver has a pinout and interface that are nearly identical to A4988, DRV8825 and similar board drivers, so it can be used as a higher-performance drop-in replacement for those boards in many applications.We have used this internally in our own projects and shared it among our friends. With all of the great feedback we have received, we have decided to open it up and launch it on a crowdfunding site to gain some more exposure and scale up the production.The Github account for SAM Controllers ishttps://github.com/SAM-controllers/SAM-VNH7DC12A-DemoThe Power H Mini campaign prelaunch page ishttps://www.crowdsupply.com/sam-controllers/power-h-mini-v2Please take a look and let me know what you think.Thank you!

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 10:04:12 pm
content: Do you think those pin headers can handle 12A?

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 10:59:15 pm
content: Quote from: cdoerfler on October 17, 2019, 10:26:09 pm7A^2 * 200mOhm = 9.8W I have a hard time seeing that work, and with PWM the EMI friendly microsecond switching is just going to make that worse

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2019, 01:01:37 am
content: Its going to be tough to beat theofficial VNH7100 eval boardat under $5.50 USD, which has enough parallel header pins and copper area for heatsinking to reasonably be able to deliver the chip's rated current.I just hope there's enough of a niche market for a miniature board that can only go up to 15A transiently with a very low duty cycle. Hope you've made those supply and output tracks beefy enough to handle 15A for a few seconds without burning up or fusing!

author: Kean
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 20, 2019, 03:02:49 pm
content: Quote from: cdoerfler on October 17, 2019, 10:00:37 pmThat is a pretty weird comparison considering the VNH7100AS is a single high current H-bridge driver, and the A4988 and DRV8825 are microstepping bipolar stepper motor drivers.Sure your module has a "similar" footprint, with "similar" pinout allocations, but the functionality is quite different and they are far from being a drop-in replacement.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2019, 12:23:51 am
content: Quote from: cdoerfler on October 22, 2019, 12:15:23 amthe VNH7100AS has much higher on resistance than the BTS796

author: Kean
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2019, 04:35:01 pm
content: Quote from: cdoerfler on October 22, 2019, 12:15:23 amYou should have the page at Crowd Supply modified then. It is very misleading, and clearly says it can be a drop-in replacement for a stepper driver, just like your original post above.Quote