Introducing an Expanded Line of Prodigy® Motion Cards for OEM Machine Designers with Onboard C-Motion Program Execution

PMD's new C-Motion® Engine enables onboard C-Motion program execution on Prodigy® Motion Cards providing greater design flexibility for distributed motion control architectures.

Lincoln, MA (PRWEB) December 18, 2008 -- Performance Motion Devices, Inc. (PMD) announces its latest advancement in the Prodigy family of motion cards, which now provides machine designers the capability to download and run motion programs directly on Prodigy cards. This new capability off-loads the PC host and increases the flexibility to distribute motion programs throughout the machine. Programs can be downloaded to the Prodigy card over UDP and TCP Ethernet protocols, in addition to serial and CANbus protocols.

Downloadable Programming

With this new release, designers can develop programs that run directly on the motion card without the need for a dedicated host PC or host controller. Program development is simplified through the use of PMD's C-Motion development environment that includes an extensive library of proven motion control code. The powerful C-Motion command set has been used in hundreds of host-based applications, and now it can be used for onboard applications as well.

C-Motion enables machine designers to quickly program motion for demanding applications using standard C/C++ programming. In addition to the C-Motion library, a suite of software tools is provided to facilitate rapid creation, downloading and troubleshooting of the programs on the Prodigy cards from the PC development environment. This C-Motion development suite includes a programming editor, compiler, download utility and debugging tools, giving designers a comprehensive toolset to create and deploy motion control applications.

C-Motion® Engine

The onboard execution capability is made possible by the addition of a new dedicated module on the Prodigy card called the C-Motion® Engine. The C-Motion Engine stores and independently executes the downloaded motion control programs. In addition to handling the motion control functions, the C-Motion Engine can also manage digital and analog I/O signals locally, allowing for much faster system responses and a reduced need for supplemental I/O cards in the system.

All Prodigy Motion Cards provide high performance board-level motion control for scientific, industrial, robotic, and general purpose automation applications. These cards support multiple motor types including DC brush, brushless DC, step, and microstepping motors, and are available in 1, 2, 3, and 4-axis versions. Based on PMD's industry leading Magellan® Motion Processor, the Prodigy cards provide user-selectable profile modes including S-curve, trapezoidal, velocity contouring, and electronic gearing. Servo loop compensation utilizes a full 32-bit position error, PID with velocity and acceleration feedforward, integration limit and dual biquad filters for sophisticated control of complex loads. Prodigy Motion Cards come with serial, CAN and Ethernet communications options. The new motion cards are available in OEM quantities starting at $575.

"Downloadable C-Motion programming gives OEM machine designers a key advantage. It enables the creation of distributed motion control architectures that off-load multi-axis motion programming from PC host processors that can be overloaded with other software application processing demands." - Chuck Lewin, Founder and VP of Engineering, Performance Motion Devices, Inc.

Features:

- C-Motion code downloadable to Prodigy Motion Card

- C-Motion® Engine peak performance : 96 MIPS with 256kB of code space

- Uses PMD's advanced Magellan Motion Control IC

- High-speed servo loop rate: 50 µsec/axis

- Available in 1, 2, 3, & 4 axis versions with user selectable motor type by axis

- PCI, PC/104 and stand-alone formats

- Direct amplifier commutation signals supporting 6-step (Hall-based) and sinusoidal commutation

- High-speed motion trace for servo tuning diagnostics (up to 40 KB)

- S-curve, trapezoidal, electronic gearing, and user-generated profile modes

- Motor Command: 16-bit analog, pulse & direction, PWM

- Incremental and parallel encoder input

- Dual loop encoder feature

- PID filter with velocity and acceleration feedforward and dual biquad filters

- PCI-bus, PC/104 (ISA), CANbus, Ethernet, or serial communications (RS232, RS422/485)

Prodigy I/O

- 2 limit switch inputs / axis

- 2 high speed capture inputs / axis

- 1 dedicated output / axis

- 8 general purpose digital inputs

- 8 general purpose digital outputs

- 8 general purpose analog inputs (10-bit)

For additional information, visit PMD Prodigy Motion Cards (http://www.pmdcorp.com/motion-control-cards/) .

Contact Information:

Martin Dugan

Vice President of Marketing

Performance Motion Devices

781.674.9860 ext. 249

About Performance Motion Devices, Inc.:

Performance Motion Devices Inc. (PMD) is a world leader in motion-control chips, cards, and modules. PMD provides a full range of high-performance single and multi-axis motion control products for DC brush, brushless DC, and step motors.

Performance Motion Devices

55 Old Bedford Rd

Lincoln, MA 01773

tel: 781.674.9860

fax: 781.674.9861

PMD (http://www.pmdcorp.com)

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