Real-time motor control software development
Learn how S2E Software Systems delivered real-time motor control software and automated test frameworks for Danfoss Drives during a 3-year consultancy retainer.
About Danfoss Drives
Danfoss Drives is a global developer, manufacturer, and supplier of variable frequency drives (VFDs) and AC drives. Its portfolio of application-optimized VACON® and VLT® drives maximizes process performance, optimizes energy efficiency, and minimizes emissions across industrial automation.
Danfoss estimates that more than 5 billion people (over 50% of the estimated world population) benefit directly or indirectly from Danfoss Drives in their everyday lives. Their installed base of drives is projected to save the annual equivalent of 60 hours of global energy consumption.
Project Goal
Given our deep expertise in the combined areas of software development and control engineering, Danfoss Drives approached us to strengthen their Motor Control Software development team.
Danfoss Drives faced competing market demands: the engineering team had to develop a new product family while simultaneously delivering new features for the existing VLT® FC product series—including flagship drives such as the VLT® AutomationDrive FC 302, VLT® HVAC Drive FC 102, and VLT® AQUA Drive FC 202. This stretched their internal engineering capacity beyond what they could staff.
Our goal was not only to provide additional engineering capacity to implement new features within their complex existing codebase but also to inject external expertise and best practices for software quality improvement.
What We Achieved
Over the 3-year engagement, our team both reworked existing software architecture and implemented critical new features in C and C++ for embedded real-time systems. Key implementations included:
- Kinetic backup
- Motor flying start
- Advanced Energy Optimization on multiple motor types
The implementation of these features involved taking control algorithm models from the control engineering team and translating them into highly optimized C code using fixed-point arithmetic. The control software executed directly on a digital signal processor (DSP) without an RTOS, subject to strict sub-millisecond execution deadlines to maintain motor control stability.
To ensure the rigorous quality required for Danfoss products, our engineers followed the certified processes used by Danfoss Drives for software development. We executed extensive automated testing and validation on dedicated, hardware test bench environments at our offices.
Figure 1: Motor test stand at the S2E Software Systems office
Business Impact
Our contribution enabled Danfoss Drives to continue releasing market-driven features for the FC product family at short notice, maintaining their competitive position while their internal team focused on developing the next-generation product line.