Renesas Electronics Corporation has launched a new group of microcontrollers (MCUs) named RA2T1, tailored for systems that control a single motor. The group is based on the Arm Cortex-M23 processor, running at 64 MHz, and is meant for devices like fans, power tools, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, printers, and hair dryers. They have a 3-channel sample and hold (S&H) function to measure the 3-phase current in BLDC motors simultaneously.
The MCUs include complementary PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) features that allow automatic dead time insertion and asymmetric PWM output for motor inverters. They have a load of built-in features for safety, including port output enable, high-speed comparator, forced PWM shutdown on overcurrent, and configurable shutdown response. Specifications include a flash memory of 64 KB, SRAM of 8 KB, and data flash of 2 KB. Under the analog features wing are a 12-bit ADC, temperature sensor, reference voltage, and high-speed comparators. The system features include multiple clock sources, power-on reset, voltage detection, event and interrupt control, and low-power operation modes. They operate safely between -40°C to 125°C and 1.6V to 5.5V.
They support the Flexible Software Package (FSP), which in turn, offers support for multiple RTOS, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity and security stacks, and reference software. This helps in the integration of existing code and allows migration to other RA series MCUs easily. Also, RA2T1 is featured in Renesas’ pre-validated system designs known as Winning Combinations. The RA2T1 MCUs are available now in multiple package sizes. Prices start around $1.32 per unit. Renesas guarantees availability through 2037, and dev kits like FPB-RA2T1 and MCK-RA2T1 are also up for grabs.
