April 21, 2003 — Microchip Technology Inc, today announced the PICDEMTM 4 Demonstration Board for the Company's low pin-count PICmicro® Flash microcontrollers, including the recently launched PIC16F and PIC18F microcontroller families featuring nanoWatt Technology. NanoWatt Technology refers to Microchip's advanced PMOS Electrically Erasable Cell (PEEC) process technology, circuit design, manufacturing and application techniques.
For $129, designers receive a demonstration tool that offers multiple socket options for increased flexibility and immediate programming and debugging.
Microchip's wide range of demonstration tools provide design engineers
with hands-on demonstrations of emerging technologies, thereby shortening design
cycles and time to market with the ability to rapidly evaluate and learn a particular
technology.
The PICDEM 4 Demonstration Board can be used to evaluate and demonstrate the
capabilities of Microchip's 8-, 14-, and 18-pin PIC12F, PIC16F and PIC18F
microcontrollers. The demonstration board showcases many features of low pin-count
parts, including Local Interconnect Network (LIN) and motor control features
using the enhanced capture/compare/PWM module (ECCP). Low-power operation is
achieved with a supercapacitor circuit and jumpers allow the on-board hardware
to be disabled to eliminate current draw in this mode.
Included on the demonstration board are provisions for crystal, RC or canned
oscillator modes and a 5-volt regulator for use with a 9-volt wall adapter or
battery, or hooks for a 5-volt, 100 mA regulated DC supply.
Additional features include an RS-232 interface, an EEPROM footprint, 2x16 liquid crystal display, PCB footprints for an H-Bridge motor driver, LIN transceiver, and an in-circuit debugger (ICD) connector for programming via In-Circuit Serial ProgrammingTM (ICSPTM) technology and developing with the MPLAB® ICD 2. A header for expansion, eight LEDs, four potentiometers, three push buttons and a generous prototyping area are also included.
By connecting the PICDEM 4 Demonstration Board to an MPLAB ICD 2, a designer
can develop, simulate, debug and download code to the microcontroller using
Microchip's powerful graphical MPLAB Interactive Development Environment
(IDE). Tutorial firmware and samples of a PIC16F and PIC18F Flash microcontroller
are included to assist the user in becoming familiar with the PICDEM 4 Demonstration
Board and demonstrate the unique features of the supported devices.
The PICDEM 4 Demonstration Board (DM163014) includes two PICmicro Flash microcontrollers and a CD-ROM containing sample programs, application notes and user's guide. The MPLAB ICD 2 (DV164007) is available as a stand-alone unit for $188. Microchip's MPLAB IDE software can be downloaded for free from Microchip web site.