element14, the development distributor, today announces exclusive global availability of the new BitScope Blade range, offering the ability to conveniently power and mount multiple Raspberry Pi’s. BitScope Blades are designed for building scalable computing solutions ranging from stand-alone servers, routers and workstations up to full compute clusters, private clouds, networked physical computing and Industrial IoT […]
microcontroller
Debouncing switches in hardware and software
A switch can be wired to a digital input on a microcontroller (MCU), but the switch contacts can mechanically bounce together and apart a few times within milliseconds before finally closing. It’s also common on relays and solenoids that pull heavier current than PCB-mounted electronics and is sometimes called “chatter” because you can hear the […]
Wireless MCUs help connect industrial, consumer and automotive applications
Delivering more available memory, Bluetooth® 5-ready hardware, automotive qualification and a new ultra-small wafer-chip-scale package (WCSP) option, Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) today announced two new devices in its scalable SimpleLink™ Bluetooth low energy wireless microcontroller (MCU) family. The new devices continue to feature advanced integration including a complete single-chip hardware and unified software solution […]
Raspberry Pi modules fit into DDR2 SODIMM connectors
Newark element14, the leading distributor and world’s largest manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi family of products and accessories, has announced the launch of 3 new products – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, Raspberry Pi Compute Module Lite and Raspberry Pi Compute Module Development kit. The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 (CM3) and Compute Module 3 […]
Top microcontroller threads on EDAboard.com – December
(editor’s note: Intrigued by the problem? Have a question or another solution? Then click the “Read more” link and follow the conversation on EDAboard.com or log in to EDAboard and participate in the microcontroller forum thread.) AC> DC> AC converter: has anyone done this? – I am planning to make an AC to DC and […]
The Internal Processor Bus: data, address, and control bus
A bus is a pathway for digital signals to rapidly move data. There are three internal buses associated with processors: the data bus, address bus, and control bus. Together, these three make up the “system bus.” The system bus is an internal bus, intended to connect the processor with internal hardware devices, and is also […]
The 10 most popular posts on Microcontroller Tips for 2016
We went into our article archives to uncover the most widely read posts on microcontrollertips.com over the past 12 months. Here for your reading (or re-reading?) pleasure are the top 10 stories: The Intel Quark microcontroller: Why an x86 is the right stuff for the IoT Gallery: Scenes from the NXP Kinetis MCU wireless day Teardown: […]
Development kit for biometric wearables includes microcontroller, Bluetooth, sensing module
Valencell, the leading innovator in performance biometric data sensor technology, and STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, announced today the launch of a new, highly accurate and scalable development kit for biometric wearables that includes ST’s compact SensorTile turnkey multi-sensor module integrated with Valencell’s Benchmark™ biometric sensor […]
Teardown: Inside a $50 smart phone,
the Blu R1 HD
The online retailer Amazon made headlines when it introduced a super-inexpensive smart phone from Blu Products in Miami called the R1 HD. The media splash arose because Amazon Prime members could get the phone for as little as $50 if they were willing to put up with seeing ads on the phone’s lock screen. With […]
MCU vs FPGA — What’s the diff?
FPGAs are highly configurable, general-purpose integrated circuits (ICs) filled with small programmable digital logic building blocks called “logic cells” or “logic elements”. A custom IC, or Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), is very similar, but with ASICs, a custom circuit design is set in silicon and is difficult to change after the fact (lasers can […]