Customer Reviews

DSP-Based Electromechanical Motion Control (Power Electronics and Applications Series)

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I was disappointed to read this book. The title, "DSP-based Electromechanical Motion Control" seems to indicate that it would cover some general techniques for motor control using DSPs.

Unfortunately, about half the book is devoted to discussing details of the Texas Instruments 2407 DSP, which I was already familiar with, since the datasheets & appnotes are available for free from TI's website. There's a little bit of "value-added" explanation by the authors, but not something I'd consider worthy of trying to publish into a textbook since technology changes so fast (usually before the ink is dry).

Quite a bit of the remainder of the book is also TI 2407-specific and includes assembly code excerpts -- It would have been better if the authors had stuck with general software & algorithm advice, in a high level language like C, or in block diagrams, rather than using a specific processor's assembly language, which takes more effort to understand and is in danger of becoming obsolete when new processors appear. (TI already has a 2800-series DSP. We use C -- assembly gives me a headache to read and I only use it when I have to.)

There is little to no analysis of control loops -- this seems to be something the authors assume the reader is already familiar with. Practical issues like PWM dead-time distortion are not even mentioned.

Good points: (there are a few, otherwise I would have given it one star) There are a few chapters on switched-reluctance motors and matrix converters which had some material I hadn't seen elsewhere. The sections on permanent magnet motors and induction motors do have the basic voltage equations for these motors -- though the chapters on them are kind of short, and other books have handled them in more detail.

I'm returning my copy to Amazon, though, and am waiting for someone to write a good in-depth practical book on DSP-based motor control that's useable on many different DSPs, not just the TI 2407 -- I can read the datasheets on that for free.