At APEC 2024, the companies will showcase reference designs for brushless motors jointly developed using AmberSemi’s AC Direct DC Enabler Power Conversion Technology and ST’s STM32 MCU devices.

Amber Semiconductor, Inc. announced a reference design for brushless motor applications using AmberSemi’s breakthrough AC-to-DC conversion semiconductor system to power ST’s STM32 microcontrollers. This reference design will be demonstrated at the Applied Power Electronics Conference in Long Beach, CA (February 25-29, 2024).

The reference design takes a direct AC input through AmberSemi’s patented AC Direct DC Enabler™ technology and powers the ST microcontroller, gate drivers, and Hall sensors for brushless motor applications. Compared to a typical brushless DC motor-control design, AmberSemi’s offline solution provides up to 5 watts of regulated output, enough to drive today’s requirement of control logic and sensors, with additional headroom for expanded intelligent functionality. The Enabler offers selectable output voltages determined by internal, configurable register settings or with a simple external voltage-divider feedback circuit. An adjustable current limiting feature on the VDC output offers protection and notification via an interrupt signal. Generation of the DC output is controlled by an internal register selection of regulator switching frequencies. This allows the designer to easily optimize between efficiency, reduced ripple, interference with sensitive system circuitry, and board space footprint.

In addition to meeting the tasks of a high-performance AC-DC offline converter, the Enabler also provides integrated functionality for supporting the next generation of intelligent applications in IoT/IIoT/AIoT. Through the integrated SPI communication port and coupled with an

SPI-equipped MCU, such as one from the STM32 family of microcontrollers, the designer can set alarm bits and protection thresholds and monitor status bits for over-current, over/under voltage, over-temperature, and interrupt signals on the Enabler. Achieving real-time reporting and telemetry monitoring of the motor load are key building blocks towards a preventative maintenance plan required in industrial applications.

AmberSemi discovered a way the physics of electricity is managed differently — digitally — in silicon chips. The company’s mission is to transform electrical product power management architecture globally from the outdated 1950s-era electro-mechanical power technologies that are standard today to smaller, safer, and smarter silicon chips.