Posted to News on 9th Jan 2009, 11:04
Motion control cards run programs without a host PC
Performance Motion Devices (PMD) is announcing a new development in the Prodigy family of motion cards, providing machine designers with the capability to download and run motion programs directly on Prodigy cards. This new capability reduces the load on the host PC and increases the flexibility to distribute motion programs throughout the machine. Programs can be downloaded to the Prodigy card over UDP and TCP Ethernet protocols, in addition to serial and CANbus protocols.
With this new release, designers can develop programs that run directly on the motion card without the need for a dedicated host PC or host controller. Program development is simplified through the use of PMD's C-Motion development environment that includes an extensive library of proven motion control code. The powerful C-Motion command set has been used in hundreds of host-based applications, and now it can be used for onboard applications as well.
C-Motion enables machine designers to quickly program motion for demanding applications using standard C/C++ programming. In addition to the C-Motion library, a suite of software tools is provided to facilitate rapid creation, downloading and troubleshooting of the programs on the Prodigy cards from the PC development environment. This C-Motion development suite includes a programming editor, compiler, download utility and debugging tools, giving designers a comprehensive toolset to create and deploy motion control applications.
C-Motion Engine
This onboard execution capability is made possible by the addition of a new dedicated module on the Prodigy card called the C-Motion Engine. The C-Motion Engine stores and independently executes the downloaded motion control programs. In addition to handling the motion control functions, the C-Motion Engine can also manage digital and analogue I/O signals locally, allowing for much faster system responses and a reduced need for supplemental I/O cards in the system.
All Prodigy Motion Cards provide high-performance board-level motion control for industrial, robotic, scientific and general-purpose automation applications. These cards support multiple motor types including brushed and brushless DC, step and microstepping motors, and are available in one-, two-, three- and four-axis versions. Based on PMD's Magellan Motion Processor, the Prodigy cards provide user-selectable profile modes including S-curve, trapezoidal, velocity contouring and electronic gearing. Servo loop compensation utilises a full 32-bit position error, PID with velocity and acceleration feedforward, integration limit and dual biquad filters for sophisticated control of complex loads. Prodigy Motion Cards come with serial, CAN and Ethernet communications options. The new motion cards are available in OEM quantities starting at $575.
Chuck Lewin, Founder and VP of Engineering, Performance Motion Devices, says: "Downloadable C-Motion programming gives OEM machine designers a key advantage. It enables the creation of distributed motion control architectures that off-load multi-axis motion programming from PC host processors that can be overloaded with other software application processing demands."
For additional information go to www.pmdcorp.com/motion-control-cards/
To view a datasheet go to www.pmdcorp.com/downloads/Prodigy_Motion_Cards_Datasheet.pdf.
