A test firmware setup is provided with the project to test the orientation of the motor phase connections on the DRV8329AEVM (OUTA, OUTB, OUTC) and monitor the hall effect sensor interrupts (HALLA, HALLB, HALLC) to determine whether the connection orientation is correct. This happens by outputting both the phase table and hall sensor positions through a UART terminal which uses the following settings: 921600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, and no flow control. The COM Port is the same as the Application UART displayed in the computer system. PuTTY software is used on a Windows® operating system in the example below, but any UART terminal or operating system is acceptable so long as the correct settings are used.

Note that UART must be fully disabled in the application to allow for standby power consumption while the motor is not spinning, otherwise active mode is required to constantly monitor the RX pin. UART can be removed from application code by undefining USE_UART in the app_bldc_motor_control.c file.

Figure 3-3 PuTTY UART Options

To enable this option, add TEST_NO_HALL inside of the Project Properties -> Build -> Tools -> Arm Compiler -> Predefined Symbols. Then, rebuild and load the project.

Figure 3-4 Predefined Symbols

Once the BLDC motor main menu is displayed, press s on the keyboard (make sure the UART terminal window is actively selected) to start the motor at a 10% duty cycle in the forward direction (forward is considered to be counter-clockwise when looking directly at the rotor shaft). If the motor direction is reversed from expected, then consider swapping two of the OUT motor phases. Otherwise, press s once more to stop the motor (or reset the LaunchPad), then iterate changes to the HALL inputs on the DRV8329AEVM until the UART output follows the exact same sequence as shown. This is to make sure that the BLDC motor runs as expected when the hall sensors are enabled.

Figure 3-5 BLDC Motor No Hall Test