chipKIT
Pi from Microchip and element14
As Raspberry Pi
really started to take off and gain momentum, a few of us from Microchip and Premier Farnell started thinking of how we could work together using the manufacturing arm of Premier Farnell, Embest, to create exclusive development tools that would offer Raspberry Pi users a chance to do real embedded MCU work.
Initial thoughts for the product were to simply link the Raspberry Pi via a cable to an existing Microchip board and develop some code which would control the board. However, the more we thought about it, the less it appealed as whilst it would have worked fine, it probably wasn’t going to offer that excitement for users that we were really aiming for.
However, as discussions went on and ideas firmed up, quite a few things started to come together and the idea was sparked that eventually became chipKIT Pi.
The creators of MPIDE (the chipKIT equivalent to the Arduino IDE) and Microchip’s developers began looking at ways in which MPIDE could be run within the Raspberry Pi environment. Whilst this work could be used as a great way of expanding the chipKIT user base, I’m also pretty sure they enjoyed the challenge set for them!
Essentially the team developed modifications so that MPIDE could run on the Raspberry Pi. This meant that Arduino-like sketches could be imported / written and downloaded via a Raspberry Pi USB port onto a range of chipKIT compatible boards. The beauty of this solution was that the sketches, which are programs that make Arduino / chipKIT boards do specific tasks, could be written by folk that are non–technical. We knew that many Raspberry Pi users were likely to be non-technical, so this really was a key breakthrough for us.
Mike McGlade – Senior Regional Channel Manager
