MICROCHIP Technology has introduced three new low-pincount PIC Flash eight bit microcontrollers, offering engineers good system-level performance.
The PIC microcontrollers (MCUs)are available in eight and 14-pin packages.
The PIC16F684, PIC16F688 and PIC12F683 MCUs offer designers up to 7168 bytes of Flash program memory and several peripheral options with integrated nanoWatt technology.
The new devices are suitable for a range of applications including home appliances, battery-operated or handheld products, sensors, interface, automotive and general-purpose control functions.
With the PIC16F684, PIC16F688 and PIC12F683 MCUs, Microchip's customers have an easy, pin-compatible migration path from the "classic" eight and 14-pin devices to the new "enhanced" low pincount products.
In addition, these devices offer the familiar x14 architecture, along with standardised features that include a wide operating voltage of 2V to 5.5V and on-board EEPROM Data Memory.
Standard analogue peripherals on the three new PIC devices include up to eight channels of ten bit A/D for easy measurement of analogue signals, and up to two comparators as general-purpose building blocks for analogue input/output control.
The PIC12F683 comes with Microchip's standard Capture/Compare/PWM module, and the PIC16F688 features a EUSART peripheral that will support standard RS232/485-type communications as well as the LIN protocol, which is popular in automotive body electronics and dashboard controls.
The PIC16F684 features an Enhanced Capture Compare module with deadband control, up to four outputs and emergency shutdown, all of which improves control capabilities in applications such as electronic motor control and power supplies.
Microchip's existing eight and 14-pin Flash devices already offer nanoWatt technology features such as nanoAmp standby current consumption, a fast start up internal oscillator operating at 8MHz (±1%), and BOR reset for reliable operation.
The new "enhanced" low pincount PIC MCUs offer additional power-management features such as software-selectable clock speed, software-controlled BOR, ultra-low-power wakeup on change, a lower-power real time clock timer and an extended watchdog timer.
These features provide customers with unmatched flexibility in managing power consumption and performance, without sacrificing system reliability in battery-operated and other low-power applications.
These new PIC devices also provide designers with the advanced and reliable Flash memory technology of Microchip's PMOS Electrically Erasable Cell (PEEC) Flash technology.
PEEC Flash increases reliability through in-field reprogrammability that can withstand one million erase/write cycles on each memory location at a wide range of operating temperatures.
The three new PIC microcontrollers come in small-footprint eight-pin SOIC and 14-pin TSSOP packages.
All three devices are supported by the full suite of Microchip's development tools, including the PICkit 1 Flash Starter Kit, MPLAB IDE (Integrated Development Environment), and the low-cost MPLAB ICD 2 (In-Circuit Debugger).