Articles and news - Microcontrollers - 10

Bye-bye ATmega328P Hello 328PB
Bye-bye ATmega328P, Hello 328PB!

We never have enough peripherals on a microcontroller. Whether it’s hardware-driven PWM channels, ADCs, or serial communication peripherals, we always end up wanting just one more of these but don’t really need so many of those. Atmel’s new version of the popular ATmega328 series, the ATmega328PB, seems to have heard our pleas...

Maxim Industrial IoT Reference Design Speeds
Maxim's Industrial IoT Reference Design Speeds Development of Authenticated Data Chains

Addressing the many issues related to system security in Industrial Internet of Things installations, the MAXREFDES143 embedded security reference design from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. provides protection against counterfeit sensor data, guaranteeing its authenticity and integrity along the entire data chain, from transducer to the cloud...

STMicroelectronics Releases Development Ecosystem Adds New
STMicroelectronics Releases Development Ecosystem and Adds New Devices in Low-Power STM32L4 Microcontroller Series

STMicroelectronics has introduced the development ecosystem for its latest low-power, high-performance STM32L4 microcontrollers (MCU) and expanded the series with five new product lines comprising a range of package and memory-density options. The expanded STM32L4 ecosystem builds on ST’s free and easy-to-use STM32Cube platform. This comprises the STM32CubeMX initialization-code generator and configurator with easy-to-use power estimation for ultra-low-power design, and the STM32CubeL4 package that contains middleware components, Nucleo-32 Board-Support Package (BSP), Hardware Abstraction Layer, and Low-Layer APIs...

FTDI Pioneering Arduino-Compatible Touch-Enabled Display Shield
FTDI's Pioneering Arduino-Compatible Touch-Enabled Display Shield Starts Shipping

After the incredible response to its crowdfunding project earlier this year, which raised 3.25 times the original target, FTDI Chip now announces the full availability of the CleO product  through its distribution partners, as well as directly via the company’s website. FTDI Chip will also give engineers complete access to a comprehensive development resource, which has step-by-step tutorials and projects, plus a series of software tools...

Comprehensive Raspberry Pi Benchmark. Part
A Comprehensive Raspberry Pi 3 Benchmark. Part 2

I thought it would be good to include this for retro' computing sake, especially considering that the Raspberry Pi is intended to be going back to the roots of learning how to code and programme with a capable hands-on computer platform. nBench has been around for so long that you can compare these benchmark results against older processors such as the 386 and even 486 based processors right up to the Intel Core i7...

No way back smart microcontroller says
No way back for the 'smart' microcontroller, says Microchip

Microcontrollers are becoming system-on-chip devices and there is no way back for the ubiquitous controller device, says supplier Microchip. Even low cost 8-bit microcontrollers now integrate a large number of peripheral circuits ranging from timers to encryption circuits, which operate independently of the processor core...

Alorium Technology FPGA dev board Arduino
Alorium Technology's FPGA dev board, Arduino compatible, in distribution

Mouser Electronics has announced a global distribution agreement with Alorium Technology, producers of the XLR8 development board which integrates an ATmega328-compatible microcontroller core and custom accelerator blocks on a field-programmable gate array...

Comprehensive Raspberry Pi Benchmark. Part
A Comprehensive Raspberry Pi 3 Benchmark. Part 1

Our good friend biglesp put the Raspberry Pi 2 to the test the last time around, though I feel that he missed a good number of possible benchmarks to run on the hardware. With that in mind, I'm going to test the main boards of the Raspberry Pi that I can get my hands on and not only run the main benchmarks Les ran, but also a good few more thanks to Roy Longbottom's benchmark collection. I also have some approximate information on idle power usage, which everyone appears to be interested in...

STMicroelectronics Arduino Launch Cooperation Expand Maker-Community
STMicroelectronics and Arduino Launch Cooperation to Expand Maker-Community Access to STM32 MCUs and Sensors

Moving to enable makers to make even more than before, STMicroelectronics , a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, and Arduino , the world’s leading open-source ecosystem for Education, Maker, and IoT markets, today announced an agreement that brings the industry-leading STM32 family of microcontrollers, along with ST’s full portfolio of sensing, power, and connectivity technology, even closer to the Arduino maker community...

Create 16x16 LED Displays Flexible Reference
Create 16x16 LED Displays with Flexible Reference Design

Hobbyists and makers now have more flexibility and options when developing LED signs, using the MAXREFDES99# 16×16 display reference design from Maxim Integrated Products. LEDs continue to dramatically transform signage and lighting. However, often LED displays today are 8×8 and cannot communicate many international alpha-numeric characters. MAXREFDES99# integrates four MAX7219 LED drivers to provide designers a 16×16 display with 256 LEDs, allowing them to create signs in multiple languages...