International Journal of Research in Advent Technology, Vol.4, No.

8, August 2016
E-ISSN: 2321-9637
Available online at www.ijrat.org

Control and Interfacing of BLDC Motor with

LABVIEW Using MYRIO
Rathy G. A 1 Associate Professor, Electrical Department, NITTTR, Chennai, India.
Aravind Balaji 2 P.G Student, Gojan Engineering College , Chennai, India.
Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract-: Permanent Magnet Brushless DC Motor (PMBLDC) motors are gaining popularity in industries like
automotive, aircrafts, medical Appliances, industrial drives and instrumentation because of their high efficiency,
silent operation, high power factor, reliability, compact, low maintenance and high torque to power ratio. The
PMBLDC motor requires an inverter and a position sensor that exposes rotor position for appropriate alternation
of current. The rotation of the PMBLDC motor is built on the feedback of rotor position that is gained from the
hall sensors. PMBLDC motor generally utilizes three hall sensors for deciding the commutation sequence. In the
proposed work, the control in the inverter circuit can be achieved using MYRIO. The pulses can be generated
from PWM pins of myRIO in a sequence and that can be used to control power devices of the inverter circuit.
This paper aims at generating the PWM pulses in the required sequence and there by achieve the speed control of
the BLDC motor with myRIO.
Index Terms- MYRIO, PWM, inverter circuit, Hall sensors, Multisim, Labview and cosimulation

1. INTRODUCTION
DC motors have a high starting torque and were and interfaced with LabVIEW with the help of code
preferred for adjustable speed applications. The DC generated in the system. In that paper the authors
motor has drawbacks such as Field losses and sparking suggested that the supply voltage is given to the motor
in the brushes and so the construction of the DC through a voltage driver circuit and the motor’s speed
motors were altered and this resulted in the Permanent is controlled by varying the time delay in the
Magnet Brushless DC motor. Brushless DC (BLDC) LabVIEW program simulation specifications[6].
motors. The winding of BLDC motor is suitably
connected to a DC supply through power Electronic
3. BLDC MOTOR CONTROL
circuitry. To rotate the BLDC motor, the stator
windings should be energized in a sequence. It is BLDC motor driver system contains BLDC motor, 3
important to know the rotor position in order to phase inverter and a digital controller unit.
understand which winding will be energized following
the energizing sequence. Rotor position is sensed
using Hall Effect sensors embedded into the stator.
When using Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) outputs
to control the six switches of the three-phase bridge,
variation of the motor voltage can be achieved easily
by changing the duty cycle of the PWM signal. This
paper aims at generating the PWM in a sequence using
MYRIO and thereby achieves the speed control of the
BLDC motor.

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Fig. 1. Existing BLDC Motor Control circuit
Oshin O Laxman(2016) in his paper on BLDC motor
speed control using co-simulation of multisim and Fig 1 shows the system for controlling the voltage and
labview has theoretically suggested that as a future speed with the associated current and voltage
work a real time control operation for a brushless dc waveforms superimposed on the circuits. The inverter
motor integrating LabVIEW tool such as my RIO or current pulses are triggered in a closed loop system by
my DAQ can be developed[2]. A Ganesan et al (2015) a signal which represents the instantaneous angular
has suggested in his paper Stepper Motor Control position of the rotor. By varying the frequency of
using LabVIEW and NI-myRIO, the pulse required to pulses the speed of the motor is controlled [4]. Rotor
run the stepper motor is generated using NI myRIO

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position can be determined by a Hall effect devices, dataflow representation. This engine provides high-
embedded in the stator, which provide an electrical level simulation optimized for embedded digital code
signal representing the magnetic field strength. The for Electrical systems.
amplitude of this signal changes as the magnetic rotor
poles pass over the sensor. By simply varying the
a. Cosimulation
voltage across the motor, one can control the speed of
the motor. The PWM techniques are used to switch To perform Co-Simulation, the Control Design and
ON or OFF the switches. In order to vary the speed, Simulation module tool along with LabVIEW 2014,
these signals should be Pulse Width Modulated multisim with LabView cosimulaton plugin is
(PWM) at a much higher frequency than the motor
required. The analog inverter circuit is draw using
frequency. The PWM frequency should be at least ten
times that of the maximum frequency of the motor [5]. multisim. After placing the components, double click
When the duty cycle of PWM is differed within the each one to change the values as required.
sequences, the average voltage supplied to the stator is It is now required to place the terminals that send and
reduced, thus lowering the speed. When using PWM receive data to and from the LabVIEW simulation
outputs to control the six switches of the three-phase engine. These terminals in Multisim are Hierarchical
bridge, variation of the motor voltage can be achieved Block or Sub-Circuit (HB/SC) terminals. Right-click
easily by changing the duty cycle of the PWM signal. and select Place on schematic»HB/SC connector from
the shortcut menu or simply type <Ctrl-I>. Place one
HB/SC connector above and to the left of the
schematic and another connector above and to the
right of the schematic.
To configure HB/SC connector as an input or output
in LabVIEW,the LabVIEW Co-simulation
Terminals window is selected by Navigating
to View»LabVIEW Co-simulation Terminals.Then
configure each connector as a voltage or current
input/output by selecting the Type. Configure s1 to s6
Fig. 2. Controlling of six switches in the three-phase as an Input and A, B, C as Outputs.
bridge of the inverter circuit In Multisim design VI preview updates with the
selections that is made. This is a preview of the virtual
instrument (VI) that is used to later place in LabVIEW
4. MULTISIM to interface with this Multisim circuit. If it is required
Multisim is a teaching environment that combines to change the input and output terminal names of this
intuitive schematic capture and simulation Multisim VI, modify the text of the LabVIEW
functionality. In this paper the 3 phase inverter circuit Terminal setting. The commutation algorithm
is generated in Multisim and the simulation is done. generated in Labview and driver circuits prepared in
With system-level simulation, it is possible to Multisim are integrated by the co-simulation feature of
implement point-by-point simulation between two Labview and Multisim programs.
separate simulation engines: analog SPICE circuitry
and digital logic. This functionality is exclusive to the
Multisim and LabVIEW platform through an approach
called cosimulation. Cosimulation allows a unique
time-step negotiation between two simulation engines
to create a closed-loop simulation of the complete
system. The result is an evaluation of a design that
includes all of the system dynamics between the
analog and digital modules. Multisim, which is
optimized for accurate analog and mixed-signal
circuitry, includes a large set of predefined SPICE
models from leading semiconductor manufacturers Fig. 3a. Control circuit of BLDC motor in multisim
such as Analog Devices, NXP, ON Semiconductor,
and Texas Instruments. The LabVIEW simulation
engine is dedicated to the effective design and
implementation of control logic through a graphical,

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 As shown in fig 5 a the speed of the dc motor is
adjusted by varying the pwm duty cycle using virtual
knob which controls the average dc bus voltage. The
amplitude of PWM generated can be varied by the
amplitude knob. The PWM waveform can be plotted
Fig. 3b. Switching sequence in a waveform chart. The rotor position can be found
Fig. 3a. Shows the control circuit of BLDC motor in out by the indication of the LEDs.
which switching is done using six IGBT with
freewheeling diode for reverse current protection. Fig
3b shows the six switching patterns depending upon
the hall sensor output for rotor movement.

5. LABVIEW CODE FOR INVERTER

CIRCUIT
LabVIEW based programming environment is very
much suitable for computer based measurement and
data acquisition. LabVIEW is a highly productive,
development environment for creating custom
application that interact with the real world signals in
fields engineering.

Fig 5 a Front panel (user interface)

Fig. 4. Rotor position switching sequence

Fig. 4. shows hall sensors sensing the position and

turning on the required switches[3]. PWM are Fig 5 b Block diagram (coding)
generated in such a way that two switches are turned
on at the same time which closes the current flow in Fig 5 b . The three hall sensor output from the motor
the circuit. is acquired on to LabVIEW using MY-RIO and are
While working with co-simulation toolbox, inverter concatenated as string inputs so that the rotor position
designed in multisim and the three hall sensor output sequence is generated. This sequence is then compared
from the motor is made to communicate with the with the six constant sequences(as in Fig 3 b) such that
labview. The control circuit is designed in labview and PWMs are generated to switch the particular switches,
the output data from the multisim is the input to the to move the motor to the next position. This PWM
labview. These are then processed and the switching switching input is given to the input of IGBTs in
pulse is generated which is then send to the inverter
cosimulation block and depending upon which output
circuit designed in multisim.
sequence is generated at the output of myRIO which
While working with co-simulation toolbox, inverter is connected to the BLDC motor along with a external
designed in multisim and the three hall sensor output power source.
from the motor is made to communicate with the
labview. The control circuit is designed in labview and 6. NI-myRIO
the output data from the multisim is the input to the NI-myRIO It is a hardware developed by National
labview. These are then processed and the switching Instruments, Texas used to acquire and process real
pulse is generated which is then send to the inverter time signals. It is a portable reconfigurable input /
circuit designed in multisim.. output abbreviated as RIO. It consists of a processor
and FPGA embedded in it and it is compact. It

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consists of two expansion port (MXP) connectors A
and B carry identical set of signals and both have 34
pin outs and a mini system port (MSP) called
Connector C. In both the cases there are certain pins
which carry primary and secondary functions. Signals
can be acquired and processed in LabVIEW and the
generated signals can be used in real time. NI-myRIO
has 3.3v, 5v, +/- 15v power output. It provides
connectivity with the host computer either over USB
or wireless connectivity. It has an inbuilt Fig 7 Dataflow diagram between multisim and
accelerometer and special functions like Pulse width LabVIEW
modulation, UART, Audio input and output
terminals[1][3]. 8. HARDWARE SETUP
The hardware set up is shown in figure 8 below. The
power supply to run the BLDC motor is 24 volts.The
output of myRIO is only 10 V. Hence External power
suply was used to run the 24 V BLDC motor. An
encoder motor is provided inorder to note the RPM of
the motor and are in displayed in a 7segement display.

Fig 8 Hardware setup myRIO Controlling BLDC

motor

9. OUTPUT- RESULT
The PWM wavefoms generated from the PWM blocks
of the myRIO at 40% and 80% duty cycle are been
noted using CRO and by varying the frequency knob
the duty cycle is varied which is shown in figure 9.
Fig 6 myRIO and its pin details

The figure 6 shows the pin out diagram of mini system

port from which we have generated digital signals to
trigger BLDC motor[7][8].

The circuit is configured in such a manner that the

RIO powers the driver circuit. My-RIO can only give
an output maximum of 10 V, 300 Ma which is not
sufficient to drive a 24 V BLDC motor and hence an
external power source is provided to drive the motor

7. INTERGRATING myRIO and LabVIEW

Fig 9 a PWM1 40% duty cycle

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 [7] National Instruments “NI-myRIO project
essentials guide” visited on 22.04.2016.
[8] National Instruments “NI-myRIO-1900 user
guide and specifications”
[9] http://www.quanser.com/products/rcptk/document
ation/ni_myrio_msp_c.html visited on 22.04.2016
[10] Brown, Ward. Brushless DC Motor Control Made
Easy. 2002, Microchip Technology Inc.
[11] E.Nesimi “Labview of electric circuits, machines,
drives and laboratories”, E. Nesimi, Prentice hall,
New Jersey 2002.

Fig 9 b PWM1 80% duty cycle

Fig 9 a and b shows the output at 40% and 80% of

the duty cycle.

10. CONCLUSION
The control circuit is drawn in multisim and using the
design and co-simulation it is interfaced with
labVIEW. The PWM block in the LabVIEW code is
then used to generate the pulses and depending on the
position of the hall sensors the pulses are given to the
six IGBT switches in the Control circuit by acquiring
the analog output through myRIO.

REFERENCES
[1] http://www.ni.com/white-paper/13721/en/myrio
visited on 22.04.2016
[2] Oshin O Laxman , Girisha Joshi, 2016, BLDC
motor speed control using co-simulation of
multisim and labview, International Journal of
Innovative Research in Electrical, Electronics,
Instrumentation and Control Engineering Nitte
Conference on Advances in Electrical
Engineering NCAEE-2016 NMAM Institute of
Technology, Nitte Vol. 4, Special Issue 2, April
2016, ISSN (Online) 2321 – 2004 ISSN (Print)
2321 – 5526
[3] http://www.ni.com/NI-Tutorial-4752-en.pdf.
[4] R. Somanatham , P. V. N. Prasad , A. D.
Rajkumar, 2006, Simulation of PMBLDC Motor
With Sinusoidal Excitation Using Trapezoidal
Control Strategy, (ICIEA 2006) 0-7803-9514-
X/06
[5] S. Prakash , R. Dhanasekaran , Syed Ammal,
2011, 'Modelling and Simulation of Closed Loop
Controlled Buck Converter Fed PMBLDC Drive
System', Research Journal of Applied Sciences,
Engineering and Technology 3(4): 284-289,
ISSN: 2040-7467
[6] A Ganesan et al.(2015), Stepper Motor Control
using LabVIEW and NI-myRIO IJSRD -
International Journal for Scientific Research &
Development| Vol. 2, Issue 12, 2015 | ISSN
(online): 2321-0613

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