BeagleBoard.org unveils open-source BeagleConnect QuadESC BLDC motor controller with AI-capable Torque SoM

BeagleBoard.org has released the BeagleConnect QuadESC, an open-source carrier board designed to drive four brushless DC motors simultaneously. The board centers on the new BeagleConnect Torque SoM, which integrates Texas Instruments' 200 MHz AM13E23019 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller with a trigonometric math unit and TinyEngine neural-network accelerator for edge AI workloads. The QuadESC carrier provides four three-phase motor outputs, extensive current and voltage sensing, temperature monitoring, and a flight-controller interface supporting DShot protocol.

The hardware design targets robotics, drones, and other multi-motor systems requiring field-oriented control. BeagleBoard.org publishes complete KiCad designs and firmware sources on GitHub, though users must supply their own motor-control code including FOC, gate-driver configuration, and fault handling. Planned software support includes Zephyr RTOS and OpenOCD, complementing TI's existing SDK and Code Composer Studio toolchain.

Hardware architecture and motor control design

• Torque SoM MCU: Texas Instruments AM13E23019 Arm Cortex-M33 at 200 MHz with FPU, 128KB SRAM, 512KB flash, trigonometric math unit, and TinyEngine AI accelerator for edge inference.
• Motor drive stage: Four TI DRV8323SRTAR three-phase gate drivers with SPI configuration, current-sense amplifiers, and fault reporting, each paired with three TI CSD88599Q5DC half-bridge MOSFETs.
• Sensing infrastructure: Twelve low-side phase-current measurements, twelve phase-voltage measurements, four NTC temperature sensors, and battery voltage monitoring, all feeding three 12-bit ADCs on the Torque module.
• Communication interfaces: CAN FD with TCAN844 transceiver, 8-pin flight-controller connector with DShot signals, telemetry, and current reporting; separate UART, SPI, and I²C expansion through 100-pad LGA and 2x 12-pin headers.
• Power and thermal design: 3S-6S battery input (9-25.2V), 32V maximum design voltage, 40A continuous and 70A burst current targets per motor pending thermal validation, with shared enable and per-driver SPI chip-select for the four gate drivers.

Why it matters

The QuadESC extends BeagleBoard.org's open-hardware portfolio into motor control and robotics, providing a fully documented reference design that competes with proprietary ESC stacks in the drone and automation markets. Its planned Zephyr RTOS support and published KiCad sources give embedded developers a vendor-neutral foundation for building CAN-connected multi-motor systems, while the TinyEngine accelerator opens paths for AI-driven predictive maintenance and adaptive control in open-source robotics platforms.