AMICUS: PIC18F25K20 (Amicus18) Based Eval Board for Microchip's PIC18F25K20

Kit Overview

The Amicus18 boardAmicus18 board  consists of an 8-bit Microchip PIC microcontroller with complementary components to facilitate programming and incorporation into other circuits. The board includes both 5-volt and 3-volt linear regulators and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, thus allowing 16-mips (Million Instructions Per second) operation. The microcontroller used on the Amicus18 is the Microchip PIC18F25K20PIC18F25K20, which has 32768 bytes of flash memory, 1536 bytes of RAM, and operates at 64MHz, which equates to 16 MIPS (Million Instructions per Second). The Amicus18Amicus18 microcontroller is also pre-programmed with a bootloader that simplifies uploading of programs to the on-chip flash memory. Compared to other devices that typically need an external chip programmer, Amicus18Amicus18 can be programmed via a USB cable that also serves as a means of power and communication to the board.

The Amicus18 board exposes all of the microcontroller's I/O pins for use by other circuits, two of which can produce PWM signals, nine can be used as analogue inputs, and there are several built in peripherals such as SPI, I2C and USART. These pins are available on the top of the board, via female 2.5mm (0.1 inch) headers. Several plug-in application boards known as "shields" are also available.

The Amicus18 Companion ShieldAmicus18 Companion Shield is a PCB that fits over the Amicus18 board and provides extra functionality, such as Ethernet, Motor control, LCD, Smartcard, GPS, GSM etc. This is a PCB laid out in the pattern of a solderless breadboard. The holes are single sided, which means that components can easily be removed using solder mop braid, or a solder vacuum tool, if a mistake is made, or components need to be re-used. Another solution is to add a solderless breadboard to the Companion shield, thus allowing the full re-use of components without the need for a soldering iron. Notice the use of header sockets instead of header pins.

Amicus18Amicus18 is an embedded system platform based on a simple open hardware design for a single-board microcontroller, with embedded I/O support and a standard programming language. The (free) programming language is a version of Crownhill’s Proton BASIC, any PIC microcontroller language can be used with the Amicus18Amicus18 hardware.

Amicus18Amicus18 can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or it can be connected to a host computer. The Amicus18Amicus18 board carries the microcontroller, some digital and analogue I/O lines, and a USB interface to the host (Personal Computer). The host is used for both programming the board, and run-time interaction. Host interfacing is simple, since the host software may be written in a variety of languages. A popular language is Visual BASIC, but other languages that can access the virtual serial connection are Processing, Max/MSP, Pure Data, SuperCollider, ActionScript, Java, Delphi, and of course C++.

Key Applications: Low Power Design, Human Interface, Connectivity, Market Specific.