BH8-Series – User’s Manual
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© 2007 Barrett Technology®, Inc.
Document: D3000, Version: AF.00
Page 58 of 82
9 Theory of Operation
9.1 Electronic Architecture
CPU Board
The CPU board handles all set-up, communications and high-level control of the power boards
including coordinated motion, force monitoring, and motor speed monitoring. The main processor
is a Motorola 68HC811E2FN microcontroller, which contains 256 bytes of RAM and 2Kbytes of
EEPROM. The CPU board contains a 128 Kbytes RAM chip external to the microprocessor,
which is used to store the BarrettHand™ firmware. The microcontroller operates at 1.25 MHz and
communicates via standard RS-232C protocol at a factory-selected baud rate of 9600, no parity
bits, eight bits per character and one stop bit. The BarrettHand™ is capable of communicating at
rates up to 38.4K baud.
Motor Power Boards
Each power board handles current control of a single DC brushless motor in the BarrettHand™
using a Hewlett-Packard HCTL-1100 motion control chip. The optical incremental encoder
signals from each motor, with 360 counts per motor revolution, are amplified and sent to the
HCTL-1100 chip. The controller uses the encoder feedback for alignment at startup and for
commutation of the motors via 10-20 kHz Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). It can also perform
position and velocity control. A functional block diagram of the power board and its relation to
other pieces of the control system is shown in Figure 21.
User’s Host PC
CPU Board
MC68HC11
Motion Controllers
HCTL-1100s
Phase
Decoder
Power
Amp
Motor
Encoder
Power Boards
Hand
Figure 21 – BarrettHand™ Controller Block Diagram