Using a Resolver Feedback Device with NI Motion or SoftMotion Products

Issue Details

NI Motion and SoftMotion products seem to be designed primarily to receive feedback from quadrature encoders. What can I do if my system requires a resolver for feedback?

Solution

NI Motion and SoftMotion products are not designed to work directly with a resolver, however, there are several companies that make resolver to encoder converters. You may want to try contacting the manufacturer of your resolver to find out what resolver to encoder converters will work with your resolver. Additionally, there are a number of companies that make converters. Below you will find links to a few of these companies.

An option available for systems using SoftMotion is the addition of FPGA code to the Axis Interface VI. The code would need to convert the resolver signal into position data. The position data would then be entered passed into the SoftMotion axis in lieu of the position data that would normally come from an encoder.  There are examples in the example finder that demonstrate functionality of an encoder with the axis interface and there is an example in the related links that demonstrates conversion of a resolver to position data.  Combining the two will require low level knowledge of the SoftMotion engine and the axis interface examples.