One of the joys of writing for Hackaday comes in following the world of new semiconductor devices, spotting interesting ones while they are still just entries on manufacturer websites, and then waiting for commonly-available dev boards. With Chinese parts there’s always a period in which Chinese manufacturers and nobody else has them, and then they quietly appear on AliExpress.
All of which brings us to the WCH CH32M030, a chip that’s been on the radar for a while and has finally broken cover. It’s the CH32 RISC-V microcontroller you may be familiar with, but with a set of four half-bridge drivers on board for running motors. A handy, cheap, and very smart motor controller, if you will.
There’s been at least one Chinese CH32M030 dev board (Chinese language) online for a while now, but the one listed on AliExpress appears to be a different design. At the time of writing the most popular one is still showing fewer than 20 sales, so we’re getting in at the ground floor here.
We think this chip is of interest because it has the potential to be used in low price robotic projects, replacing as it does a couple of parts or modules in one go. If you use it, we’d like to hear from you!
Yeah this chip is begging to be made into a custom SMPS with all kinds of random features. Ridiculously long soft start time, variable frequency and duty cycle, etc etc
Gets people familiar with RISC-V as well. That’s an ecosystem that needs growth.
Can we get another write up on a workflow for these guys in 2026!
The hbridge in the silicon is interesting but surely it can’t manage much switching?
I can’t imagine what a good usecase would be other than some very small motors.
If you’re trying to run large motors, then you’re almost certainly in an application where there’s plenty of room to also put in large electronics.
Chips like this are specifically for tiny applications with equally tiny size constraints.
Why do you think they can’t manage much switching? Most of the heat will be generated in the external FETs.
This. The chip only includes gate drivers, not FETs. There are some other very interesting peripherals, too. There are two small-signal amplifiers with digital filters (for SDR), dual programmable current sinks and dual programmable current sources, USB full-speed host and device, USB PD controller… I love these WCH chips!
This is a chip made for low cost drones
That makes perfect sense!!
And all good points yes I was imagining someone running a tumble dryer off this.
Plus it seem to have PowerDelivery Protocol Include so you can pull more power from the USB-C for your motors!
some nice analog capabilities too.
Yeah, keep promoting and buying chinese chips, make sure TI, Microchip, ST, NXP and others go under when they’re no longer able to compete with state-subsidied companies in China. When they do and you’re left with GD32s and other CH32s don’t be surprised if one day CCP declares we’re only able to purchase 8-bit stuff from then, unless we order manufacturing (incl. FLASH programming) directly in China.
You hit it right on the nose. “We love cheap import goods” versus “We can’t find a decent-paying job in the USA” rears its head.
I, for one, am in favor of import duties for just this reason.
The thing is, this era you speculate about where we are limited to a set of vendors who are basically hostile to our aims has actually happened. It’s not a hypothetical risk. And it’s over, because China saved us from it. In my experience, Chinese stuff is more likely to be open, more likely to be hackable, more likely to be amenable to me assembling my own stuff according to my own desires. More likely to provide a low-cost developer board. More likely to encourage open source SDK kit, even if it looks like the reason they’re doing that is to avoid providing direct support.
I’m not saying there’s not trade offs, or that China won’t hurt me in the future. And, personally, i still have a fondness for Microchip’s PIC12 though i don’t know how many of them i’ll use in the future. But i sure af won’t miss ST Micro. The comings and goings of different semiconductor manufacturers and different product lines are of interest to us, and these aren’t automatically bad just because they’re Chinese. And in terms of price, performance, and openness at the low end, the news has lately all been good.
Just because the US neglects it’s industry doesn’t mean we should subsidise by overpaying.
Next we’ll have tipping culture spread to Mouser asking for 10% extra cause owners don’t pay the manufacturers enough…
you subsidize it just by paying taxes.
Waiting for TI, Microchip, ST, NXP to start producing chips with such useful sets of features…
🦗🦗🦗
ST has STSPIN32 series that started in 2020, its basically variant of STM32 (from various lines) with gate drivers built in one chip. you can get them rated up to 600V, with CORDIC (math functions eg trigonometry accelerator) and CAN.
though ST chips are more pricey and lack HV regulator so they arent “make quadcopter as cheap as possible” optimized chips.
Inifneon has similar MOTIX series of MCU with drivers built in.
Not that familiar with rest of vendors you listed
I feel more mistreated by Western brands right now
The moment i had to create an account on their website with everything from my employer, job title etc just to read a datasheet…. Just so that they can email me random stuff
Yeah I’m sorry
/\ This. It’s a shame that we now praise the openness of Chinese stuff because the American stuff is now toxic up to the core.
Just make things up. You think they’re going to send out people to check all this?
If you make up your email address then you can’t receive the magic code to download the datasheet :)
(yeah i use throw aways)
It is not random. NXP tracks which documents you download with your account. Sporadically a sales person will contact you to talk about these chips.
TI’s not-in-China fab capability is still larger than any other company in the world. If TI decided to compete on cost they could do so. Yes I work there.
make ti ubiquitous again!
did they ever stop? i still find ti chips in everything. its just nothing spectacular (mostly 7400 stuff). i wish id have kept my ti99.
Why should I as a Brit, favour the manufacturers of your country or indeed any other in my writing? It would look peculiarly blinkered were I to only talk about products of British origin, I am sure you will agree.
I think your concerns are misplaced though. American manufacturers have their own markets, and indeed their own subsidies. They continue to make awesome products, which we all continue to use. Just, not this one.
i keep a small supply of american components, most of it military surplus, just because i miss the days when you could get quality american parts. i got some immortal hermetically sealed potentiometers im taking to the grave with me.
Your government literally just bought 10% on Intel lol
Now can you guys find me a chip that’d let me get easy USB-C with DisplayPort hooked up to an FPGA?
You’re right, that would be cool.
Better yet, find a chip that has all three within the same die, low-power RISC-V, bunch of CPLDs ready to boot AND small-ish (but usable) FPGA. WiFi can be left out to be handled by ESPC3/6 outside of the die (and easily controllable – turned on and off when/if needed).
This chip finally has 4 OpAms together with 3 CPD for the quadrature detection, which is mighty nice, but we need moar, say 16 OpAmps for things like massive parallel differential computations without the code.
Regardless, insofar it is hit and mostly miss, some chips will have this, some will have that, etc.
64KB Flash, 12KB SRAM, 72 MHz, built-in LDO for 5-28 V, no datasheet yet.
Go to the product page linked above. Click on the red “More Downloads” button at the bottom.
It’s hard to believe people in the US complain that you shouldn’t buy the chinese product even it it is better/cheaper/more open than a US product, because it comes from china!
Blame your own industry/legal system/ etc etc – as sure the chinese stuff gets some gov help here and there (as does the US industry) but it is the competitive nature of the industry there – including that they can copy off each other without spending millions in lawyers – that result in many of these types of chips.. Whereas the US is mostly moribund…
That also kills any incentive to innovate.
You can spend years researching & developing a product and then some Kou Jiao Zhe Shenzhen Electronics Industries Ltd. will simply use one of your disloyal employees to nick all your designs and code, butcher it and sell it for 75% of your price, driving you bankrupt. Because of PRC’s legal system your only option is to sit in the corner, crying, quietly contemplating your inadequacy before deciding to emigrate to US.
Seriously. How many actual high-tech consumer-level inventions have you seen coming from mainland China in the last 30 years? I don’t mean them being able to make power tools under some random letter-soup “NHGRAAU” Amazon spam brand that work almost as good as Milwaukee (at least while they’re new); or electric scooters; or smartphones.
Zero… Oh wait, no, there’s one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#Modern_(1912%E2%80%93present)
Amazing 😂
Now compare PRC with Israel which also came into being post WW2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_inventions_and_discoveries
You really think inventions are about some fancy new consumer product? Innovations are happening all the time, you just aren’t looking.
Also, if you design a product that needs massive up front engineering work but can be trivially copied afterwards, you’re only setting yourself up for failure, and lawyers will not save you. The big US firms will steal your work just as readily as China’s will.
Any constraint drives innovation, not just the ones you personally benefit from.
I like the idea of motor drivers baked in. Alot of my projects don’t do a lot except step two motors and read a few analog pins. Seems like a good way to save some money.
Nowhere on this page, or the linked pages can I find how many Amps those h-bridge drivers can handle. And that figure really is one of the most critical ones for knowing how suitable this chip actually is for any given application.