Tag Archives: Microchip


Inductance-Capacitance Measurement using PIC18 Microcontroller

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When designing or debugging an electrical or electronics device, it is very important to know the values of the components that have been used on board. With a multimeter most of the components can be easily measured and identified but most ordinary multimeters do not have options to measure inductors and capacitors as this is rarely needed. However, without capacitors there are literally no circuits while complex circuits may have inductors in them. A LCR (inductor-capacitor-resistor) measurement meter can be used to determine the aforementioned components but usually such meters are pretty expensive.

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Great Cow Basic new release announcement

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Great Cow BASIC (GCB) is a BASIC compiler for Microchip and Atmel microcontrollers. It lets you to program in BASIC instead of having to learn assembly or C language and is completely open source! The GCB team has announced the release of Great Cow BASIC v.0.95.007, which has built-in support for Microchip’s latest Xpress Evaluation board and including a host of demonstrations for this board.

The Great Cow Basic development team have published another release that further enhances the Great Cow Basic compiler capabilities. The Great Cow BASIC development team have published another release that further enhances the Great Cow BASIC compiler capabilities.

  • Support for the Xpress Evaluation board including a host of demonstrations for the Xpress Evaluation board.
  • New GCB utility to load hex file into Microchip Xpress board.
  • Improved performance to increase productivity and to reduce compilation time.
  • Improved string handling. Strings can be defined with escape characters like quotes and semi-colons.
  • New volatile bit can be defined that improves setting for specific bits.
  • Enhanced bit Not operator – now works with bit variables!
  • Further improvements to #option explicit.
  • Ethernet support for ENC28J60 adapter with a full TCPIP stack. This is a separate download.
  • Performance improvements to further improve productivity.
  • New optimisation options for A-D.h and PWM.h to reduce the size of generated asm and hex file.
  • Improved support for 900+ Microchip and Atmel 8-bit microcontrollers .

Microchip 10F, 12C, 12F, 16C, 16F, 18C and 18F devices.  The LF devices are now automatically supported (no need for LF specific chip files).

AVR microcontrollers Classic AVR, Tiny AVR and Mega AVR devices.

Support for 16f85xx class of microcontroller plus changes to the supporting hardware files.

New commands to support PPS.  LOCKPPS and UNLOCKPPS.

  • Improved software I2C support that now includes timeout when using software I2C Master.
  • An IDE to make programming as easy as possible including Help and IDE Helpers.
  • 450+ demonstration files that showcase the breadth and depth of capabilities.
  • Support for a large set of supported hardware accessories.

New I2C2 drivers adding 2nd I2C support.

GLCD handling with even more types of GLCD supported.

  • New scalable fonts with added support for extended fonts sets.
  • Increased support for microcontroller timers by supporting all the available microcontroller timers – this can be up to 12 separate timers.
  • New support for HEFM memory.
  • Handling the default Interrupt handlers.
  • Full Linux version of the Great Cow BASIC Compiler and the toolchain
  • New Windows installer for four different type of installation.
  • Plus other new functionality and enhancements or fixes over the previous release – over 190 major changes since the April 2015 release.

Great Cow BASIC an Open Source project.  See http://gcbasic.sourceforge.net/index.php

Microchip Announces a new Graphical User Interface Composer Tool

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Microchip announces MPLAB Harmony Graphics Composer, a free development tool for engineers to easily develop and design professional graphical user interfaces.
Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHP), a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, today announced the MPLAB® Harmony Graphics Composer (MHGC), a modern and flexible graphical user interface (GUI) composer tool. MHGC is a free development tool for developing GUIs for all PIC32 microcontrollers through Microchip’s Harmony Configurator and MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The software allows anyone to create branded content using the Harmony Graphics Library, in conjunction with their custom assets, to create GUIs in a What-You-See-is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) design model, without complex and cumbersome coding.

MPLAB® Harmony Graphics Composer (MHGC)

MPLAB® Harmony Graphics Composer (MHGC)

Microchip is launching “Curiosity” development board

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Microchip is launching a new development board called Curiosity for 8-bit PIC lovers. It supports 8-, 14-, 20-pin 8-bit PIC® Microcontrollers with low voltage programming capability and has an integrated Programmer/Debugger with USB Interface that is fully compatible with Microchip’s MPLAB X development environment.

Curiosity development board from Microchip

Curiosity development board from Microchip

Your next embedded design idea has a new home. Curiosity is a cost-effective, fully integrated 8-bit development platform targeted at first-time users, Makers, and those seeking a feature-rich rapid prototyping board. Designed from the ground-up to take full advantage of Microchip’s MPLAB X development environment, Curiosity includes an integrated programmer/debugger, and requires no additional hardware to get started.

Curiosity is the perfect platform to harness the power of modern 8-bit PIC® Microcontrollers. Its layout and external connections offer unparalleled access to the Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs) available on many newer 8-bit PIC MCUs. These CIPs enable the user to integrate various system functions onto a single MCU, simplifying the design and keeping system power consumption and BOM cost low.

Also, check out Mike Szczys‘ (over Hackaday) reviews of this new PIC development board here.

Microchip’s new Gesture controller IC

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Microchip Technology has announced the second member of its award-winning and patented GestIC® family. The new MGC3030 3D gesture controller features simplifies user-interface options focused on gesture detection, enabling true one-step design-in of 3D gesture recognition in consumer and embedded devices. Housed in an easy-to-manufacture SSOP28 package, the MGC3030 expands the use of highly sought after 3D gesture control features to high-volume cost-sensitive applications such as toys, audio and lighting.

3D gesture controller

3D gesture controller

The simplicity of gesture-detection integration offered by the MGC3030 is also achieved through Microchip’s free, downloadable AUREA graphical user interface (GUI) and easily configurable general purpose IO ports that even allow for host MCU/processor-free usage. The MGC3030’s on-chip 32-bit digital signal processor executes real-time gesture processing, eliminating the need for external cameras or controllers for host processing, and allowing for faster and more natural user interaction with devices.

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