Protections

AN4241

12/18

Doc ID 024193 Rev 1

3

Protections

The dSPIN™ family devices provide a complete set of protections designed to prevent from

damaging the device in critical conditions.

The implemented protections are:

●

Overtemperature (see Section 3.1)

●

Overcurrent (see Section 3.2)

●

Undervoltage (see Section 3.3)

3.1

Overtemperature protection

The overtemperature protection disables the power stage of the device when the

temperature of the chip exceeds the safe operation conditions.

When the overtemperature protection is triggered the device is locked in a safe condition (all

MOSFETs are turned off) and is kept in this condition until the junction temperature

decreases below 130 °C (typical). The thermal shutdown event occurrence is signaled

through the respective flag (TH_SD) in the STATUS register which is kept low until it is

released by a GetStatus command (more details are available in the datasheet of the

device).

A warning threshold is also present allowing the host to control the device to prevent the

shutdown.

3.2

Overcurrent protection

The overcurrent protection monitors the current in all power MOSFETs of the device and

disables the power stage when the programmed current threshold is reached. No

information about the specific MOSFET or bridge causing the failure is available.

As soon as the overcurrent protection is triggered, the device is locked in a safe condition

(all MOSFETs are turned off) and is kept in this condition until the OCD failure flag is

released by a GetStatus command.

When the device is locked in safe state no command enabling the bridges can be executed

(e.g. Move, Run, GoTo, HardStop, etc.). The commands are simply ignored, no non-

performable signalling is returned by the device.

Warning:

The overcurrent protection can be disabled setting the

OC_SD pin of the CONFIG register to zero. However it is not

recommended this protection to be disabled.

3.3

Undervoltage

The undervoltage protection avoids the power stage of the device to operate with a supply

voltage below the safe conditions.