Chapter 4 Functional Overview
© National Instruments Corporation 4-3 NI 7350 User Manual

Onboard Sinusoidal Commutation

The NI 7350 controller provides onboard sinusoidal commutation for axes
controlling brushless DC servo motors. This feature reduces overall system
cost by allowing you to use less complex, and therefore less expensive,
motor drives.

Flash Memory

Nonvolatile memory on the NI 7350 controller is implemented with flash
ROM, which means the controller can electrically erase and reprogram its
own ROM. Because all of the embedded firmware, including the RTOS,
DSP code, and the FPGA configuration file of the NI 7350 is stored in flash
memory, you can upgrade the onboard firmware contents in the field for
support and new-feature enhancement.
Flash memory also allows objects, such as programs and data arrays, to be
stored in non-volatile memory.
It is possible to save the entire configuration state of the controller to the
flash memory. On the next power cycle, the controller automatically loads
and returns the configuration to these new saved default values.
Use MAX to download new firmware or save configuration defaults to
flash memory.
A flash memory download utility is included with the NI-Motion software
that ships with the controller.
Axes and Motion Resources
The NI 7350 controller can control up to eight axes of motion. The axes
can be completely independent, simultaneously started, or mapped in
multidimensional groups called coordinate spaces. You also can
simultaneously start coordinate spaces for multi-vector space coordinated
motion control.

Axes

At a minimum, an axis consists of a trajectory generator, a PID (for servo
axes) or stepper control block, and at least one output resource—either
aD AC output (for servo axes) or a stepper pulse generator output. Servo
axes must also have either an encoder or ADC channel feedback resource.
In addition to an encoder feedback, brushless DC servo axes also can use
Hall effect sensors for initial position feedback. Closed-loop stepper axes