How do you get an MCU design to market quickly?

The short answer is with development boards. For more details, at Sensors Expo 2018, an expert from Microchip Technology explains how his company expands the capability of microcontroller (MCU) evaluation boards with numerous MikroElektronika plug-ins using a microbus connector for a variety of applications. In addition, with the MPLAB Code Configurator, base code can be easily added to many of the plug-ins.

For example key boards are the Curiosity High Pin Count (HPC) for the PIC16F18875 but includes 8, 16 and 32-bit verisons, MPLAB Xpress for the 8-bit PIC16F18855 MCU and the Xplained Pro AVR and ARM-based MCUs that range from 8 to 32-bits.

The MikroElektronika microbus connector allows the use of plug-ins from MikroElektronika, a Serbian company, with any of these development boards. MikroElektronika has 450+ plug-in boards, 100 of them employ Microchip products as their base technology including MCUs, RF wireless and sensor products. Called Clicks, plug-in boards address sensors, wireless, analog and mixed signal, fan, security, brushless dc motor control, Wi-Fi and more with several Click boards in each category.

Adding to the design-in simplification and expediting that these components provide, with Microchip’s Code Configurator, developed code can easily be added to the hardware. Code Configurator is a free, graphical programming environment that generates seamless, easy-to-understand C code to be inserted into a user’s project. Microchip already has base code for 75 Clicks. Adding code for example for weather is as simple as selecting the desired topic from a list and selecting a port, I²C, in this case, and adding it to the MCU.