Jun 7 2010
Microchip Technology has introduced new, advanced 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) series called the PIC18F ‘K90’. The PIC18F ‘K90’ series feature a 12-bit ADC and an on-chip liquid crystal display (LCD) driver.
The PIC18F ‘K90’ series incorporate a nanoWatt XLP technology, a 20 nA sleep currents, and require only 5 V of power. The microcontrollers are available in 80- and 64-pin QFN and TQFP packages and include memory options, which vary from 32 to 128 KB of Flash memory to 1 KB of on-chip EEPROM and 4 KB of RAM.
The microcontrollers feature 24 channels of mTouch capacitive touch sensing, which allows advanced system integration. This system integration can drive large sectioned liquid crystal displays and can detect a large number of keys, buttons and cap-touch sliders.
Microchip’s Vice President of Advanced Microcontroller Architecture Division, Mitchel Obolsky, informed that the microcontrollers are suitable for those customers who need to drive huge, sectioned liquid crystal displays, while requiring low-power consumption for increased battery life.
The microcontrollers are ideal for home-automation applications such as in-home displays, security systems, thermostats, refrigerators, coffee makers, HVAC controls, electronic door locks, keyless entry, alarm systems, health-monitoring and digital thermometers, among others.
Microchip has also included a development tool support, the Plug-In Module (PIM) for the PIC18F87K90 microcontroller. The Plug-In Module can be utilized with the PICDEM LCD 2 Demo Board or can be used as a stand alone system in customized applications.
A complete set of standard development tools such as development boards, programmers, emulators, MPLAB IDE and HI-TECH C or MPLAB C compiler for PIC18 microcontrollers are available for designers.