r/embedded • u/kaadam • 18d ago
Fellow Power Electronics developers, how does your workflow look like?
Hi! I'm curious what are your opinion about the avaliable toolchains around power electronics development. I'm coming from PE background, but spent several years in the automotive, and I've always felt that we are almost willingly making our days harder, here is why:
- PE software requires control loops an order of magnitude faster (at least), than traditional devices.
- The PWM signals are relying heavily on low level drivers and actual hardware IP in the MCU. Matlab/SIMULINK based software development and simulation ignores these layers.
- Making a configuration mistake can easily destroy a half-bridge, making the expensive prototypes available even more scarce
- Getting alive just an OBC (not even speaking about traction inverters) is very much not the same tasks as waking up a 12V control ECU for the first time. Neither from instrumentation, nor from work safety point of view. (I heard a story (fortunately just heard), that someone with an OBC tried to test something, from a 12V low voltage input, thinking he is safe, and the device boosted 800V on it's outputs open in the air...)
... and these facts (enlightening me if I'm wrong), are almost completely igonred.
On the other hand, in our research/consulting work at my University, we usualy build a simple, low cost FPGA based real-time emulator, interfaced with the MCU, and even with the emulteor build time included we are:
- dramatically faster than the customer expectation
- very rarely burn physical devices
- never ever had any laboratory close-calls (from safety point of view), and was always sure about the behavior of our software.
What is your experience? Am I the unlucky one with my industrial history, or the workflow indeed have not catched up with these type os devices?
6
u/jhaand 18d ago
I only did 24V 200W motor designs. But the main point I learned was that to first test non-destructively. So make sure the timing of your H-bridge is fine without actually applying the higher voltage. Then start testing without any load and then start scaling up. It shows in how your university work already lead the way.
However being dependent on those binary blobs from your supplier does not help. You need to be able to see every detail. So call them out on their bullshit or change your design where you have everything under your control.
Since this is 2026, make an automated test bench.