An interface board for developing control loops in power electronics based on microcontrollers and DSPs Cores -Arduino /ChipKit /dsPIC /DSP /TI Piccolo

In this paper a new control-interface card for developing simple control loops and generating test signals for power electronic converters is presented. The control board can operate with two computational cores (Texas Instruments and Microchip) allowing using the preferred DSP architecture and development environment. Moreover, the interface board can operate with open hardware Arduino-like boards such as the ChipKit Uno32. The paper also describes how to enhance the performance of a ChipKit Uno32 with a dsPIC obtaining a more suitable solution for power electronics. The basic blocks and interfaces of the boards are presented in detail as well as the board main specifications. The board operation has been tested with three core platforms: TI Piccolo controlSTICK, a Microchip dsPIC and a ChipKit Uno32 (Arduino-like platform). The board was used for generating test signals for characterizing 1200 V Si and SiC power semiconductors. A 6 kW dc-dc converter prototype is presented; the converter is based on the developed interface board.