H-Bridge motor control with STM32

Using the h-bridge circuit, we rotate a motor in the clockwise and counter-clockwise direction. In the previous article, PWM control of a motor through STM32 has already been tested.

H-bridge explanation

Basically, P-MOSFET draws current from the source to the drain while N-MOSFET allows current flow from the drain to the source when they are ON.

For reference, we can think of the following circuit called CMOS inverter. Vout should be LOW when Vin is HIGH and Vout is HIGH if Vin is LOW. The threshold for determining whether Vin is HIGH / LOW is approximately Vcc/2 (ref.

Taking this into account, there are 4 cases to be considered.

Our h-bridge circuit is described as follows.

The first case is both PWM 1 and PWM 2 are LOW, thus the outputs of the CMOS inverter circuits are HIGH. This results in a brake condition for the motor.

In the PWM 1 HIGH and the PWM 2 LOW case, the current flow is depicted as follows and the motor rotates.

The motor reverses its rotation when the PWM 1 is LOW and the PWM 2 is HIGH.

High voltage input from both PWM 1 and PWM 2 results in a stop condition.

The voltages are measured by sanwa multimeter.

Hardware

Used two tactile switches for controlling the rotational direction of a motor. When you press the blue switch, the motor rotates counter-clockwise. Pressing the red one makes it rotate clockwise.

Setup

As in the previous article, the following setup is used.

Circuit

The circuit schematic is here on github!

Transistors, registers, a capacitor, and diodes configurations are as follows. Diodes and a capacitor are installed for circuit protection.

The following diagram shows the PIN layout of NUCLEO-F030R8.

We use 4 PINs this time and each PIN has the following role.

In order to power up STM32, 5V PIN is connected to the battery whose voltage is approximately 5V.

Software

GPIO configuration (setting of .ioc file)

Utilize timer 1 channel 1 and timer 3 channel 1 for PWM output and GPIO input for tactile switches.

Output for Motor PWM

As in the previous article, we set the PWM configuration of timer 3 ch 1 as follows. I adopt the same configuration to timer 1 ch 1.

Input from tactile switch

Both GPIO inputs introduce GPIO pull-down resistors. Those PINs are labeled as SW0 and SW1, respectively. Since we use pull-down resistors, a HIGH signal comes when the button is pressed and a LOW signal comes when it is not pressed.

Source code

User defined part is very simple. I added the following code for activating the motor. The full source code is uploaded here on github.

  /* USER CODE BEGIN 2 */
  HAL_TIM_PWM_Start(&htim1, TIM_CHANNEL_1);
  HAL_TIM_PWM_Start(&htim3, TIM_CHANNEL_1);
  /* USER CODE END 2 */

  /* Infinite loop */
  /* USER CODE BEGIN WHILE */
  while (1)
  {
	uint8_t button_state0 = HAL_GPIO_ReadPin(SW0_GPIO_Port,SW0_Pin);
	uint8_t button_state1 = HAL_GPIO_ReadPin(SW1_GPIO_Port,SW1_Pin);

	if (button_state0 == 1) {
		__HAL_TIM_SET_COMPARE(&htim1, TIM_CHANNEL_1, 255);
	} else {
		__HAL_TIM_SET_COMPARE(&htim1, TIM_CHANNEL_1, 0);
	}

	if (button_state1 == 1) {
		__HAL_TIM_SET_COMPARE(&htim3, TIM_CHANNEL_1, 255);
	} else {
		__HAL_TIM_SET_COMPARE(&htim3, TIM_CHANNEL_1, 0);
	}
    /* USER CODE END WHILE */

    /* USER CODE BEGIN 3 */
  }

1. starting PWM outputs
2. read GPIO values of the tactile switches
3. depending on the values, change PWM outputs

As a result, when none of the switches are pressed, the motor acts as a brake, rotating counter-clockwise when the blue switch is pressed and clockwise when the red switch is pressed.

Reference

• MOSFET H-Bridge Motor Control
• Control a DC Motor with STM32F4 and H-Bridge
• H-Bridges – the Basics
• H-bridge driver in StackExchange
• Dual H-Bridge Motor Driver IC
• FETでハーフブリッジ回路
• 【Arduino入門編⑤】プルアップ・プルダウンって何？
• STM32マイコン_5(スイッチ入力とLED点灯、消灯)
• インバータの特性としきい値電圧