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Poll: Are You Interested in Roadtesting the Microchip AVR128DA48 Curiosity Nano Evaluation Kit

Hi all! I just heard from Microchip that it is interested in roadtesting its AVR128DA48 Curiosity Nano Evaluation Kit.

 

With full program and debug capabilities, the AVR128DA48 Curiosity Nano Evaluation Kit offers complete support for your next design. Use either Atmel Studio 7 or MPLAB X IDEs as a magnifying glass to look into your MCU and step through the debug. Free, easy-to-use graphical programming tools, Atmel START and MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC), allow you to intuitively program the target MCU. The kit includes the AVR128DA48 Curiosity Nano evaluation board and Two 100mil, 1x28 pin header strips.

DM164151 CURIOSITY NANO DEV BOARD, 8-BIT AVR MCU

 

The board features the AVR128DA48.

 

The AVR DA family of microcontrollers feature the well-known AVRRegistered CPU, now running at up to 24 MHz across the full supply voltage range of 1.8V to 5.5V. The family includes 32 KB, 64 KB and 128 KB Flash variants in 28- to 64-pin package options. The AVR DA family is designed to bring capacitive touch sensing and real-time control functions to applications including industrial control, home appliance products, automotive and Internet of Things (IoT).

 

The family uses the latest Core Independent Peripherals with low power features and 5V operation for increased noise immunity.  The Event System, Configurable Custom Logic (CCL), along with intelligent analog peripherals, like 12-bit differential ADC, Zero-Cross Detect (ZCD), DAC and the latest generation Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC) with driven shield technology make the AVR DA  family perfect for low-latency control applications and capacitive touch user interfaces. The high memory density of the AVR DA family is well suited for communications stack intensive applications, both wired and wireless.

 

The AVR128DA48 microcontroller is part of the AVR DA family featuring the AVR processor with hardware multiplier - running at up to 24 MHz and with 128 KB Flash, 16 KB SRAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM in 48-pin packages. The AVR128DA48 will be available in TQFP and VQFN package options.

AVR128DA48

 

The AVR128DA48 product supports as many as 32 self-capacitance and 256 mutual capacitance touch channels, which makes the AVR DA the perfect choice for human interface applications where multiple capacitive touch keys, sliders, wheels or 2D surface are required.

 

This product is recommended for safety critical applications targeting both industrial and automotive products (IEC 61508 and ISO 26262). Necessary documentation such as FMEDA report and Safety Manual can be provided on request. Certified development tools are also available for this product. Please contact your local Microchip sales office or your distributor for more information.

 

Additional Features

  • 12-bit Differential Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC)
  • 10-bit Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) with Output Buffer
  • Zero-Cross Detector (ZCD)
  • Analog Comparator
  • Timer/Counter Type A/B/D with PWM Outputs
  • Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC/Scan)
  • Configurable Custom Logic (CCL)
  • Event System (EVSYS)
  • Watch Dog Timer (WDT) with Window Mode
  • Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC)
  • 1D Touch with MCU (Buttons, Sliders, Wheels, Proximity)
  • 2D Touch Pads with MCU

 

 

Poll Question: Would you like to roadtest this kit?

Parents

  • No, I'm not interested in reviewing MPLAB X nor do I have any experience in industrial or automotive fields. I really love the AVR 8-bit microcontrollers for the GCC support, being able to use them with GCC and Make is what I value the most. Since the manual doesn't name the mEDBG interface anymore I'm guessing that this Roadtest will be all about MPLAB X and how ATMEL Start makes using the µC a lot easier? That's not so much of a complaint as it's a realization on my part that Microchip probably want to hear about the large ecosystem they've built to support their many different µC platforms.

     

    To give others an idea of why ATMEL Start is mentioned as a bullet point, these microcontrollers with CCL-blocks are very hard to use without the nice online wizards or graphical tools that show how the truth table is used. ATMEL Start also show how the blocks are wired/muxed with pins or other peripherals along with which interrupt signal they are using (included among the many events that can be handled). I've taken this screenshot from the CCL Configurator help page to hopefully give people an idea how what ATMEL Start provides. When all is wired up you can download the MPLAB code directly from this tool and use it on the µC. There's a separate page for setting up and routing events (more advanced and fine grain interrupt signals).

    image

    Traditionally this is probably something you'd have to work out yourself from the datasheet, but with the CCL-blocks being somewhat complex this tool is almost a necessity for getting it right.

     

    The PINMUX page is also really nice, instead of your traditional Excel sheet to keep track of which function is muxed to the physical pins, here's a really nice graphical view instead.

    image

     

    What makes the Curiosity boards really awesome is that they include an online debugger which along with being a debugger also provides a serial port and some GPIO for used when debugging. This is completely different from say an Arduino Nano where the debugging is limited to throwing things at the wall to see what sticks with printfs. It's unfortunate they call them both a "Nano" so I just wanted to bring this up for anyone who just wants a faster Arduino, this isn't it.

     

    There's also the recommended target being industrial and automotive, which is where I'd guess that the CCL and other core-independent peripherals (peripherals that do not require code to execute for them to do their work) come in to play big time. I think those could assist in building something that is fail-safe, even if the code crash or get's stuck the peripherals would run and events would still be handled.

     

    So even if it looks like a tiny red board at first glance there's a much bigger world inside of it. But I could also be completely wrong and Microchip just want to see their product used for something more creative and see people make amazing projects using the 2D capacitive sense inputs?

Comment

  • No, I'm not interested in reviewing MPLAB X nor do I have any experience in industrial or automotive fields. I really love the AVR 8-bit microcontrollers for the GCC support, being able to use them with GCC and Make is what I value the most. Since the manual doesn't name the mEDBG interface anymore I'm guessing that this Roadtest will be all about MPLAB X and how ATMEL Start makes using the µC a lot easier? That's not so much of a complaint as it's a realization on my part that Microchip probably want to hear about the large ecosystem they've built to support their many different µC platforms.

     

    To give others an idea of why ATMEL Start is mentioned as a bullet point, these microcontrollers with CCL-blocks are very hard to use without the nice online wizards or graphical tools that show how the truth table is used. ATMEL Start also show how the blocks are wired/muxed with pins or other peripherals along with which interrupt signal they are using (included among the many events that can be handled). I've taken this screenshot from the CCL Configurator help page to hopefully give people an idea how what ATMEL Start provides. When all is wired up you can download the MPLAB code directly from this tool and use it on the µC. There's a separate page for setting up and routing events (more advanced and fine grain interrupt signals).

    image

    Traditionally this is probably something you'd have to work out yourself from the datasheet, but with the CCL-blocks being somewhat complex this tool is almost a necessity for getting it right.

     

    The PINMUX page is also really nice, instead of your traditional Excel sheet to keep track of which function is muxed to the physical pins, here's a really nice graphical view instead.

    image

     

    What makes the Curiosity boards really awesome is that they include an online debugger which along with being a debugger also provides a serial port and some GPIO for used when debugging. This is completely different from say an Arduino Nano where the debugging is limited to throwing things at the wall to see what sticks with printfs. It's unfortunate they call them both a "Nano" so I just wanted to bring this up for anyone who just wants a faster Arduino, this isn't it.

     

    There's also the recommended target being industrial and automotive, which is where I'd guess that the CCL and other core-independent peripherals (peripherals that do not require code to execute for them to do their work) come in to play big time. I think those could assist in building something that is fail-safe, even if the code crash or get's stuck the peripherals would run and events would still be handled.

     

    So even if it looks like a tiny red board at first glance there's a much bigger world inside of it. But I could also be completely wrong and Microchip just want to see their product used for something more creative and see people make amazing projects using the 2D capacitive sense inputs?

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