Chris continues his tour to FPGA/CPLD programming. This time topic covers a motor control using CPLD board. The idea is simple – read potentiometer value with on-board MAX150 ADC converter and according to its value generate PWM signal that is passed to motor control circuit.

Along with motor rotation PWM signal is output to LED bar which gives visual intuition on motor speed and direction. Using CPLD instead of microcontrollers in motor control gives some benefits. Firs of all in CPLD there are hardware modules instead of software flow. So it is more robust and precise process. Another benefit is that you can create multiple hardware modules that work concurrently and thus give precise timing.

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