32-bit MCUs Speed Development of Sophisticated Interface Designs
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Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller, analog, and Flash-IP solutions, offers two new development tools for adding advanced human interfaces to PIC32, 32-bit microcontroller-based designs. The Multimedia Expansion Board enables development of highly interactive, graphics-based interfaces with network connectivity. The enhanced mTouch Cap Touch Evaluation Kit adds a new board for implementing capacitive touch sensing with the PIC32.
Consumer and industrial customers want products with easy-to-use graphic interfaces, touch-screen controls, high-quality audio prompts, capacitive touch buttons / sliders, and wireless connectivity. The PIC32 microcontroller line has expanded to serve these market requirements, and the two new kits make it easy and cost effective for embedded designers to develop a broad range of consumer and industrial applications that require intuitive human interfaces.
The Multimedia Expansion Board is a modular add-on to any PIC32 Starter Kit. The board demonstrates how to implement a flexible graphics display strategy that is not dependent on controller-based QVGA Display Modules, which are frequently obsoleted. It also includes a high-quality 24-bit stereo audio codec line out, headphone and microphone jacks, integrated FCC-certified Wi-Fi®, an on-board 3-axis accelerometer and a 5-position joystick.
The enhanced mTouch Cap Touch Evaluation Kit includes a new board for development with the PIC32. It comes equipped with capacitive touch-sensing keys and sliders, which allows designers to evaluate this interface in their applications using the Windows® OS-based mTouch Diagnostic Tool. This software tool provides an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) for developing cap-touch buttons and sliders, and is included in the free MPLAB® Integrated Development Environment. The additional software libraries, source code and other support materials that come with the board further shorten development cycles and reduce design costs.