Microcontroller enables real-time control for smart cities, says Microchip
Core independent peripherals, advanced analogue and on-chip communications are integrated in the latest AVR microcontrollers from Microchip. The higher-performance microcontrollers are required for better real-time control as well as to enable enhanced human machine interface (HMI) applications, explains Microchip. The AVR DA family of microcontrollers is the company’s first functional safety-ready AVR microcontroller family with Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC).
The family of microcontrollers meets new demand across multiple industries with advanced analogue and core independent peripherals and more capacitive touch channels over existing devices, said Greg Robinson, associate vice president of marketing, 8-bit microcontroller business unit. Target applications are the connected home security, building automation and sensor systems to automotive and industrial automation.
Microchip’s Functional Safety Ready designation covers devices that incorporate the latest safety features and are supported by safety manuals, failure modes, effects, and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA) reports, and in some cases, diagnostic software. This reduces the time and cost of certifying safety end applications. The AVR DA microcontroller family includes several integrated safety functions to ensure robust operation to ensure a sufficient supply voltage such as power-on reset, brown-out detector and voltage-level monitor. The cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scan ensures the application code in the flash memory is valid. By ensuring code integrity, unintended and potentially unsafe behaviour of the application can be avoided.
The AVR DA family of microcontrollers enable CPU speeds of 24 MHz over the full supply voltage range, memory density of up to 128 kbyte flash, 16 kbyte SRAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM, 12-bit differential ADC, 10-bit DAC, analogue comparators and zero cross detectors.
The PTC enables capacitive touch interface designs supporting buttons, sliders, wheels, touchpads, smaller touch screens as well as gesture controls used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products and vehicles. The AVR DA family supports up to 46 self-capacitance and 529 mutual capacitive touch channels and features the latest generation PTC with Driven Shield+ and boost mode technologies to enhance noise immunity, water tolerance, touch sensitivity and response time, says Microchip.
For embedded real-time control systems, the integrated event system enables inter-peripheral communication without involving the CPU. Events are latency-free and never lost, for predictable, reliable and safe designs. By reducing the time the CPU needs be active, the overall power consumption of the application is reduced.
The configurable custom logic peripheral enables the set-up of logical functions internally, eliminating the need for external components, reducing board space and bill of material costs. With the advanced analogue features like the 12-bit differential ADC, the AVR DA family of microcontrollers can measure small amplitude signals in noisy environments, making them well suited for sensor node applications in harsh environments.
According to Microchip, the high memory density and SRAM-to-flash ratio make the microcontrollers attractive for both wireless and wired connected sensors nodes, as well as other stack-intensive applications.
Software support includes Microchip’s MPLAB X, MPLAB Xpress and Atmel Studio, code configuration tools including MCC and START, and compilers including GCC, XC8 and the IAR Embedded Workbench. A functional safety certified version of the XC8 compiler is available via Microchip’s Functional Safety Ready program. Hardware support is included in debuggers/programmers including MPLAB PICkit 4, MPLAB SNAP, Atmel ICE and the AVR128DA48 Curiosity Nano evaluation kit.
The AVR DA family of microcontrollers is available in volume production now.
