A system for determining motor speed of a brush DC motor in an apparatus, including circuitry for sensing current in the brush DC motor; a first filter for receiving a substantially DC component of the sensed current and parameters corresponding to the brush DC motor, for calculating a speed estimate thereof; an adaptive bandpass filter having a center frequency corresponding to the speed estimate of the first filter, for receiving the sensed current and substantially isolating a periodic current fluctuation thereof; a block for determining a frequency of the periodic current fluctuation, the periodic current fluctuation frequency being a commutation frequency of the brush DC motor and corresponding to motor speed of the brush DC motor. The motor speed determined from the periodic current fluctuation of the motor current is then used to control the speed of the motor.