I’m wondering about the oscillator clock stability of Endpoint and its ability to drive the clock of other devices (powerStep01s). Are the PWM outputs a stable clock source?
Oh wow. Nobody knows? Is there someway I can find/figure it out? Should I do research on the microprocessor?
Just not to let the crickets win the day: In spite of doing a lot of work on the endpoint recently, I have not looked into this on this particular chip, and it looks like no one else has. Sounds like the docs and/or an oscilliscope are the route at this point.
Not knowing what the powerStep01 is I looked up the datasheet. It is an integrating microstepping stepper controller with 10A outputs from ST Micro. According to the datasheet, there is an internal oscillator available. What would the advantage be to using the PWM from the Endpoint?
Alright, scope it is. I suppose I’ll have to burden the processor somehow to validate that CPU load doesn’t affect PWM performance.
The advantage of using the PWM on the Endpoint as opposed to the internal Oscillator on the PowerStep01 would be clock frequency stability. The EndPoint’s clock is based on a crystal oscillator. From that “should” come a stable, deterministic CPU frequency as well as PWM frequency. Once that’s driving the PowerStep01’s CPU a well the motions commands should be much more deterministic and predictable. A motion command should take a certain amount of time to execute, no more and no less. If I can’t use the EndPoint’s PWM then I’ll have to find some sort of external crystal clock module that I can bolt on to the PowerStep01.