22 Dec 11

We've been trying to find a way to start introducing 32 bit PIC development platforms beyond the Chipkit series - and it looks like Microchip has just made things easier for us.  Up until now, you needed to integrate a 64 or 100 pin PIC32 device, and for smaller applications, this meant a lot of wasted pins.

So Microchip has just introduced a new series of microcontrollers that would provide space and cost effective solutions for applications requiring high-quality audio, touch-sensing and graphics capabilities.

The PIC32MX1and PIC32MX2 MCUs provide 61 DMIPS of performance and are the first PIC32s to include I2S interfaces for audio processing along with Microchip’s Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU) peripheral for adding mTouch™ capacitive touch buttons or sensors. An 8-bit Parallel Master Port (PMP) interface is also included for graphics or external memory.

These chips are Microchip's smallest and lowest cost PIC32 microcontrollers, with packages as small as 5mm x 5mm for the 28-pin and 36-pin devices and 6mm x 6mm for the 44-pin device. The memory canbe configured with either 16/4KB or 32/8KB (Flash/SRAM).

Click for larger image

These devices also feature 1 Msps, 10-bit ADC which provides high-speed analog data acquisition on 13 channels. A Peripheral Pin Select feature enables designers to “remap” most I/O pins in the chip,making layout and design changes mush easier. A USB 2.0 interface is provided, along with other serial communications options as shown in the diagram above.