[REVIEW]: SimpleFOC: A Field Oriented Control (FOC) Library for Controlling Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) and Stepper Motors

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @askuric (Antun Skuric)
Repository: https://github.com/simplefoc/Arduino-FOC/
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch): joss_paper
Version: v2.2.2
Editor: @gkthiruvathukal
Reviewers: @sea-bass, @ixjlyons
Archive: 10.5281/zenodo.6510536

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Checklists

📝 Checklist for @sea-bass

📝 Checklist for @ixjlyons

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Checking the BibTeX entries failed with the following error:

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[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.88  T=0.13 s (1218.7 files/s, 146488.4 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C++                             53           1460           2383           6275
Arduino Sketch                  66           1164           2099           2602
C/C++ Header                    37            463           1302           1106
Markdown                         3             80              0            228
YAML                             1             13              1             56
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                           160           3180           5785          10267
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


gitinspector failed to run statistical information for the repository

[editorialbot]

Failed to discover a Statement of need section in paper

[editorialbot]

⚠️ An error happened when generating the pdf.

[gkthiruvathukal]

@sea-bass and @ixjlyons, Have you been able to get started with review? Please follow up here.

[sea-bass]

Review checklist for @sea-bass

Conflict of interest

• I confirm that I have read the JOSS conflict of interest (COI) policy and that: I have no COIs with reviewing this work or that any perceived COIs have been waived by JOSS for the purpose of this review.

Code of Conduct

• I confirm that I read and will adhere to the JOSS code of conduct.

General checks

• Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the https://github.com/simplefoc/Arduino-FOC/?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@askuric) made major contributions to the software? Does the full list of paper authors seem appropriate and complete?
• Substantial scholarly effort: Does this submission meet the scope eligibility described in the JOSS guidelines

Functionality

• Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
• Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
• Performance: If there are any performance claims of the software, have they been confirmed? (If there are no claims, please check off this item.)

Documentation

• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
• Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
• Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g., API method documentation)?
• Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?
• Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1) Contribute to the software 2) Report issues or problems with the software 3) Seek support

Software paper

• Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
• A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled 'Statement of Need' that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
• Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
• References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)? Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

[sea-bass]

@sea-bass and @ixjlyons, Have you been able to get started with review? Please follow up here.

Hi @gkthiruvathukal -- I have just gone through the software for my review: simplefoc/Arduino-FOC#174

While the software, documentation, etc. looks great, we are still unable to generate the software paper and therefore review that piece. Could you and the author take a look at this and update us when the paper is available?

Additionally, the CI pipeline includes compilation tests, but there are no unit tests, so I have recommended the addition of those for some of the core C++ source.

[askuric]

Hey @sea-bass,
Thanks for the review!
The paper is the joss_paper branch link. That was one of the suggested ways by the joss webiste ( to add a branch with the paper).

If you prefer I can add the paper to the master.
Antun

[sea-bass]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[sea-bass]

Hey @sea-bass, Thanks for the review! The paper is the joss_paper branch link. That was one of the suggested ways by the joss webiste ( to add a branch with the paper).

If you prefer I can add the paper to the master. Antun

Thanks, @askuric -- turns out the main issue description didn't specify a branch, so it defaulted. I've just edited it to the joss_paper branch. Let's see how this turns out.

EDIT: Yep, that worked. I've updated my review and the comment about unit tests is the only major one amidst minor comments.

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[gkthiruvathukal]

@sea-bass and @askuric. Thanks for the updates here.
@ixjlyons Have you been able to get started with the review?

[ixjlyons]

Review checklist for @ixjlyons

Conflict of interest

• I confirm that I have read the JOSS conflict of interest (COI) policy and that: I have no COIs with reviewing this work or that any perceived COIs have been waived by JOSS for the purpose of this review.

Code of Conduct

• I confirm that I read and will adhere to the JOSS code of conduct.

General checks

• Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the https://github.com/simplefoc/Arduino-FOC/?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@askuric) made major contributions to the software? Does the full list of paper authors seem appropriate and complete?
• Substantial scholarly effort: Does this submission meet the scope eligibility described in the JOSS guidelines

Functionality

• Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
• Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
• Performance: If there are any performance claims of the software, have they been confirmed? (If there are no claims, please check off this item.)

Documentation

• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
• Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
• Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g., API method documentation)?
• Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?
• Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1) Contribute to the software 2) Report issues or problems with the software 3) Seek support

Software paper

• Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
• A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled 'Statement of Need' that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
• Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
• References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)? Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

[ixjlyons]

@gkthiruvathukal (et al.) apologies for the delayed start - I should be able to finish reviewing in the next couple days.

[ixjlyons]

My review:

---

SimpleFOC is a library offering a modular approach to implementing field oriented control with various hardware components. I'm currently not able to directly verify functionality of the library, but I've been able to successfully compile several examples and have reviewed portions of the code. The code itself, along with the very well-done documentation, appear to be a great resource for implementing advanced motor control for a variety of applications. I recommend accepting.

General Comments

I may have missed it, but I haven't come across clear community guidelines as required by JOSS in the documentation or README. I think this is the only blocking issue. Aside from that, I only have a few minor comments:

• It took me some time to find the API docs - perhaps there could be a direct link in the sidebar?
• In the Writing the Code page, the buttons to toggle position sensor choices (magnetic sensor vs. encoder) don't seem to work.

Paper

No major concerns with the paper. Below are some minor comments:

• Line 10: haven't seen the use of "alternative current" before, consider revising to "alternating current". Also consider changing to lower case "alternating current" and "brushless"
• Line 16: looks like there are extra spaces inside the parentheses around "see Figure 1"
• Line 19: it seems like the FOC approach is general, while the implementation is hardware-specific
• Line 43: should probably use singular "motor" for consistency with other items in the list, or rework to "...supports many combinations of motors, sensors, ..."
• Line 48: lowercase "stepper" except in the class names
• Line 53: maybe replace comma with a semicolon
• Line 75: consider revising to "...configurability of SimpleFOC..." (i.e. remove "the"), or maybe "...the SimpleFOC library..."
• Line 83, should have a comma after "bandwidth"

[askuric]

Hey @ixjlyons and @sea-bass,
Thank you very much for your insightful and supporting reviews!

@sea-bass
With the new release of the library we've spent some time on the gifs/moving images and made them a lot more clear. Thank you for the suggestion.
We'll also consider adding more functionality unitary testing, but for now as the code is intended to be run on different MCU architectures and interface with different hardware components the full scale testing is a bit hard to do. But as you well pointed out there are ways to do it and we should do more in this regard. :D

@ixjlyons
We've updated the paper to account for your remarks.
In the docs, the button has been fixed and we've added much more examples which can be interchanged with a click of the button to make it easier to understand.

Regarding the community guidelines.
As many of our users are not really git users we have opted to the scheme where they are free to propose and share their problems/contributions within the community framework And if they are motivated we help them to create the PR request and we really treat each one case by case.
But you are absolutely right that we would need a bit more structures issue template and PR template in order to make contribution and issue reporting more efficient and more clear.
We add the guidelines to the github repo this till the end of this week.

Thanks again for your time and let me know if there is something else that you'd like us to consider!

[ixjlyons]

@ixjlyons We've updated the paper to account for your remarks. In the docs, the button has been fixed and we've added much more examples which can be interchanged with a click of the button to make it easier to understand.

Looks good to me 👍

Regarding the community guidelines. As many of our users are not really git users we have opted to the scheme where they are free to propose and share their problems/contributions within the community framework And if they are motivated we help them to create the PR request and we really treat each one case by case.

I think that's fine -- my understanding is there just needs to be guidelines written somewhere to make expectations clear. I'd say the links in the header of the docs cover getting help and maybe even bringing up issues. "Please open an issue to propose improvements" in the README would be sufficient I think. Pull request / issue templates are great additions too.

[sea-bass]

@sea-bass With the new release of the library we've spent some time on the gifs/moving images and made them a lot more clear. Thank you for the suggestion. We'll also consider adding more functionality unitary testing, but for now as the code is intended to be run on different MCU architectures and interface with different hardware components the full scale testing is a bit hard to do. But as you well pointed out there are ways to do it and we should do more in this regard. :D

Of course! I was only suggesting unit testing, as having full-scale (or system-level) testing for a hardware-focused library would be unreasonable.

[askuric]

Hey @ixjlyons,
Ok so we've added a short contributing webpage as the addition to the contact page in the docs.

Also the README was extended with the section about contributing and different community platforms that are available.

Finally, I've added the first version of issue templates that should enable users to post more direct and precise questions/issues. For the PRs it is a bit more tricky so we will provide the templates a bit later.
In any case, the docs and the README and our communications are clearly oriented in a way to encourage the users to contribute in any way they feel most conformable about.

[ixjlyons]

Great, looks good to me. Unless there's still a hangup on testing, I think that was the last outstanding issue. So this should be ready to go, nice work.

[sea-bass]

According to the guidelines, the requirements are:

Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?

If there is no plan to create automated unit tests / a CI pipeline for this review process (which is a totally fair decision), could you point me to the "manual steps" that would meet the criteria above? And if not available, could some documentation on testing this software and verifying it works as intended be made?

Thanks!

[askuric]

Hey everyone,

I am sorry for a late reply!

At the moment the CI pipeline for unit testing of the software components is really not our priority. Mostly because the most of the problems due to the library code comes from the MCU specific issues which cannot really be unit tested.
We are definitely interested in integrating the unit testing at some point (the sooner the better) but at the moment we do not have the time resources to do it :D
We are however making sure that the library compiles for each one of the supported platforms using the githubs CIs, but for the moment not more than that.

However, we do have guidelines in the docs that explain how each user can verify that each part of the library works correctly with their hardware. This is a very important step for setting up any of the users hardware setups, regardless of how standard or nonstandard they are. So in an way each user really needs to test and verify that the library code works well with their hardware. Additionally we support many different debugging and monitoring features which facilitate testing as well.
Getting started explains step by step testing/verification procedure: docs page.
Additionally there are many examples codes in the library that are intended for testing and verifying that library works as expected with given hardware.
Library examples link

As basically all of our users use our code only in combination with hardware components, till this point we did not consider putting in place any purely software testing procedures, all of our testing procedures are coupled with hardware components.

[sea-bass]

@askuric thank you for clarifying that and pointing me to the right resources -- I think that absolutely meets the testing requirements, and agree with your prioritization especially given the hardware-focused nature of the project.

LGTM :)

[gkthiruvathukal]

@editorialbot set v2.2.2 as version

[editorialbot]

Done! version is now v2.2.2

[gkthiruvathukal]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[gkthiruvathukal]

@editorialbot recommend-accept

[editorialbot]

Attempting dry run of processing paper acceptance...

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

OK DOIs

- 10.1109/CoDIT49905.2020.9263910 is OK
- 10.1109/EIConRus.2018.8317164 is OK
- 10.1049/iet-pel.2018.5231 is OK
- 10.1109/ICRERA.2018.8566749 is OK
- 10.21105/joss.00456 is OK
- 10.46842/ipn.cien.v25n1a05 is OK
- 10.1109/IPRECON49514.2020.9315210 is OK
- 10.4230/OASIcs.PARMA-DITAM.2021.3 is OK
- 10.1109/IECON.2016.7793092 is OK
- 10.1109/IEIT53149.2021.9587419 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2012.6386252 is OK

MISSING DOIs

- 10.51257/o-42509210 may be a valid DOI for title: Mécatronique

INVALID DOIs

- None

[gkthiruvathukal]

@askuric Please check the MISSING DOIs. Thanks!

[editorialbot]

👋 @openjournals/joss-eics, this paper is ready to be accepted and published.

Check final proof 👉 openjournals/joss-papers#3297

If the paper PDF and the deposit XML files look good in openjournals/joss-papers#3297, then you can now move forward with accepting the submission by compiling again with the command @editorialbot accept

[askuric]

@gkthiruvathukal thanks!
The book Méchatronique does not have a DOI number, the suggested DOI is not referencing the same book.
In the paper we have provided the ISBN number of the book and the year of publishing.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@askuric

• I checked the archive meta-data and all looks good. 👍
• I checked the version tag for the review and archive and verified they match 👍
• I proofread the paper and have the following comments:
• Please edit the affiliations to include country as well (and please spell out country names rather than using acronyms)

[askuric]

Hi @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman,

Thanks for the updates.
The countries are added to the affiliations, don't hesitate to let me know if there are other changes necessary.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@askuric thanks. Can you please group the community member affiliations into 1 and remove the countries there? This is not needed here. Thanks.

[askuric]

Ok, done.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@editorialbot accept

[editorialbot]

Doing it live! Attempting automated processing of paper acceptance...

[editorialbot]

🐦🐦🐦 👉 Tweet for this paper 👈 🐦🐦🐦

[editorialbot]

🚨🚨🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL, YOU HAVE JUST ACCEPTED A PAPER INTO JOSS! 🚨🚨🚨

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[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@askuric congratulations on your JOSS paper!

Thanks @gkthiruvathukal for editing this work, and thank you @sea-bass and @ixjlyons for your review efforts!!

[editorialbot]

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[askuric]

Awesome, thanks @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman!

Thanks @gkthiruvathukal , @sea-bass and @ixjlyons for your reviews and helpful comments, we appreciate it.