Microchip Technology Inc. has introduced two microcontroller families designed with customer innovation in mind.
The PIC16F18446 family of microcontrollers are components for use in sensor nodes. Designed with flexibility in mind, the PIC16F18446 and its integrated Analog-to-Digital Converter with Computation (ADC2) runs from 1.8V to 5V. The 12-bit ADC2 does its filtering autonomously. Because the ADC2 has the ability to wake the core only when needed, instead of on a pre-determined schedule, the power consumption of the system is lowered, making this MCU ideal for battery-powered applications.
The introduction of the ATmega4809 brings a series of megaAVR microcontrollers that were designed to create responsive command and control applications. The processing power of the integrated Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) enables conversion of analog signals resulting in deterministic system responses. As the first megaAVR device to include Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs), the ATmega4809 can execute tasks in hardware instead of through software. For example, the Configurable Custom Logic (CCL) peripheral can connect the ADC to a customized combination of external triggers through hardware, without interrupting the core, which improves response time while reducing power consumption. The ATmega4809 can also be added to a system to offload functions from more complex microprocessor (MPU)-based designs. By using CIPs to execute command and control tasks in the MCU instead of in the MPU.
The ATmega4809 has been selected to be the on-board microcontroller of a next-generation Arduino board. The addition of the ATmega4809 to this board is intended to allow developers to spend less time coding and more time creating.
The PIC16F18446 microcontrollers are compatible with MPLAB PICkit 4 (PG164140), Microchip’s in-circuit tool for programming and debugging. The Curiosity development board (DM164137), a prototyping board, can also be used to start development with these MCUs. Both development tools are supported by the MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the cloud-based MPLAB Xpress IDE. Additionally, MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC), a free software plug-in, provides a graphical interface to configure peripherals and functions for any application.
Prototyping with the ATmega4809 is supported by the ATmega4809 Xplained Pro (ATmega4809-XPRO) evaluation kit. The USB-powered kit features touch buttons, LEDs and extension headers for setup as well as an on-board programmer/debugger that integrates with the Atmel Studio 7 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Atmel START, a free online tool to configure peripherals and software.
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