Power Electronics Research Unified Technologies
www.perun-power.com
LARA-100 Motherboard has two main functions: the
first one is to enable easy plug-in of controllers (Texas
Instruments C2000 series) and the second one is to
host other Expansion boards based on plug-in
principle. You might think of it in similar way as of PC
motherboard.
The role of LARA-100 Application Boards (APP
Boards) is to extend the LARA-100 system
functionalities and features related to specific power
electronics applications. There are two main types of
Application boards: Motor drive and Grid-Connected.
The first one enables direct interfacing with
incremental/absolute encoders, resolvers or tachogenerators. The second one supports interfaces
with grid voltage lines, photovoltaic (PV) strings, currents measurements, etc. i.e. supports grid-
connected applications.
LARA-100 Communication Boards or simply COMM Boards are compact boards for extension of
LARA-100 system with a variety of standard communication interfaces such as Ethernet, CAN or RS-
485 communication buses. Application note: COMM Boards are ideal solution for expanding LARA-
100 power converters in order to form complex systems such as micro- and smart-grids, where
COMMs are connected with supervisory controllers and several LARAs that stand for different grid
elements.
LARA-100 GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) comes with all sorts of digital and analog input
and output circuitries. Suitable GPIO Board directly interfaces switches, buttons, power relays,
power contactors, power LEDs, meters, or industrial PLCs with LARA-100 system controller. and
quickly build power electronics hardware platform immediately ready for control development and
testing.
LARA's software suite PERUN PowerDesk is responsible for
system configuration
supervisory control
data acquisition
real time access to all controller variables
analysis of measured signals (real time filtering, Fourier)
mathematical manipulations over signals in real time
control design tools (Bode plots, etc.)
Very important fact is that PERUN PowerDesk can be utilized as an integral part of LARA-100 system as
described above, but also it can be employed as a standalone software package. In this scenario a user
can develop and test a control code on Texas Instruments C2000 controller using Perun PowerDesk for
all mentioned purposes except for system configuration (since there is no LARA's hardware). What do
you need in this case? Clearly you need some kind of a docking board to plug in controller and a PC with
installed PERUN PowerDesk. You can use either LARA-100 Motherboard or TI's Experimenter's kit in the
role of the docking board.
Figure 2: LARA-100 Motherboard
