CCS announced today a complete development kit for designing products based on Microchip's Enhanced Mid-Range core MCU family. The PIC16F1937 Development Kit combines the powerful CCS optimizing C compiler and ICD-U64 programmer/debugger with a new prototyping board expressly designed to support development of segmented LCD display applications running on Microchip's PIC(R) PIC12F1xxx/PIC16F1xxx devices.
Accelerate Development of Products Incorporating LCD Displays
Segmented LCD displays are used in a wide variety of cost-sensitive industrial and consumer products such as digital thermometers and blood sugar monitors, instrumentation and measuring devices. These products often utilize a low power microcontroller to drive the display. Software needs to be developed for that purpose, with C becoming the increasingly popular language of choice.
The CCS optimizing C compiler speeds development of that software. The compiler contains built-in functions that convert symbols directly into decoded LCD segments, greatly simplifying the task of displaying text on the screen.
"The compiler's built-in functions help software engineers quickly develop tight, maintainable source code for LCD display applications," explains Mark Siegesmund, President of CCS. "In addition, the compiler performs string compression on the 7-bit ASCII strings commonly used to drive LCD screens, which results in a small ROM footprint even when coding in C."
The CCS developed prototyping board serves as a known good hardware platform that the software engineer can use for code development while waiting for the final product's custom designed hardware. The board features a PIC16F1937 MCU with integrated LCD driver and an LCD screen, an RS-232 serial port, pushbuttons, potentiometers and LEDs, and an expansion I/O port for connection to sensors and other custom circuitry. It's accompanied by complete documentation including an exercise book with LCD display drive examples.
Complete Microchip Enhanced Mid-Range Architecture Core Support
The CCS Code optimizing C compiler supports up to 56K instructions and 4K RAM for these new 14-bit opcode devices. The Enhanced Mid-Range core's new 16-level hardware stack is fully supported by the compiler's call stack, reducing the number of inlined system functions that must be coded. Built-in system functions are provided for all of the enhanced peripherals including A/D converters and comparators, SPI and I2C serial buses, PWM, mTouchTM, non-volatile memory and LCD controllers.
Pricing and Availability
The PIC16F1937 Development Kit is immediately available in product configurations priced from $50 to $459. For more information, please visit www.ccsinfo.com/LCD
About CCS:
CCS is a worldwide leading supplier of embedded software development tools that enable companies to develop premium products based on Microchip PIC® MCU and dsPIC® DSC devices. Complete proven tool chains from CCS include a code optimizing C compiler, application specific hardware platforms and software development kits, accelerating the development of energy saving industrial automation, wireless and wired communication, automotive, medical device and consumer products. Established in 1992, CCS is a Microchip Premier 3rd Party Partner. For more information, please visit www.ccsinfo.com.
MPLAB® ICD 2 , dsPIC® DSC and PIC®MCU are a registered trades of Microchip Technology Inc in the U.S.A and other countries.
