stepper motor control using labview fpga

[Pokiri]

Hello!! I m a beginner to Labview fpga. I am trying to develop an application using labview fpga.The idea of my logic is as follows. Two push buttons should be connected to compactRIO.With these buttons, one should be able to start a and to stop a stepping motor.If one of the buttons is pushed,the stepping motor starts accelerating until the speed specified within the Software GUI is reached.Then it goes on turning with that speed until the other button is pushed.Then it decelerates until the speed is zero.Both acceleration and deceleration shall be implemented with a simple ramp function.As mentioned above, within in the software GUI one should be able to define the maximum speed of stepping motor.There should also exist two buttons in Software GUI which have the same functionality as hardware buttons.Further more,there should be an indicator for four possible states of stepping motor(stop,continuous speed,accelerating and decelerating) Any ideas on how to proceed are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[FatLarry]

You'll need first to set on some implementation details: "what" driver the stepper? A stepper controller that has for example a USB or ethernet port, etc. Then decide where FPGA comes into place: are you using it to build your state machine (your control logic) on a board that is on a client PC, or do you want to download it to a FPGA board (afraid this option is not available yet  for 3rd party FPGA's in LabVIEW- use the Xilinx tools instead- unless this is your homework ...then you'll have to accomodate the ignorance of your master and commander ...wha-hahaha ).  Basically think of it like a "black box" - inside there is your state machine, that takes your inputs - you pushing those buttons- and translates them to your outputs - a series of commands for your steppper motor controller.

Sorry, without more details I can't be more specific (probably I can't even with those details ... it's been a while since I've done FPGA's, and definitely I wouldn't use LabVIEW for that: yes, it's nice for show-off, but .. ..)

[yaHeard]

Hi Pokiri,

I agree that it will take some more information to help with the specifics of your programming and setup but I wanted to make you aware of the NI SoftMotion Development Module for LabVIEW, which is an add-on for LabVIEW that allows users to carry out Supervisory Control, Trajectory Generation, Spline Interpolation, and Position/Velocity PID Control completely in software.  It is designed with Compact RIO devices that utilize FPGA and ships with examples for LabVIEW FPGA.  Example programs are also included for common applications such as single axis moves, coordinated multi-axis moves with blending, and contoured moves, so they will cover the four states you mentioned.