Electronics-Lab.com Blog

The Kinetis L Microcontroller board from Freescale. The board features a Cortex-M0+ ARM processor, a suspiciously familiar minty-fresh board silhouette, and headers that remind me of summers in Ivrea. From EDA360: [via]

There are two major reasons for reading this blog post:
A 32-bit microcontroller that sells for as little as $0.49 in 10K quantities and consumes 50µA/MHz
A $12.95 development board to be available late in September

These are two of the salient attributes of the Freescale Kinetis L microcontroller, previewed at Design West in San Jose back in March and now announced at the Freescale Technology Forum in San Antonia with alpha samples shipping. The target for this product is the vast sea of products and applications that currently incorporate 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers—mainly for reasons of legacy code, legacy familiarity, and cost. It will take a compelling product to hurdle these barriers and the low prices for the Kinetis L silicon and development board will help to jump those hurdles.

Freescale Announces $13 ARM Cortex-M0+ Microcontroller Board - [Link]

Freescale Semiconductor introduced the MM912J637 intelligent battery sensor (IBS), which accurately measures the voltage, current and temperature of lead-acid batteries and calculates the battery state, all while operating in harsh automotive conditions. The ability to accurately assess these battery parameters is becoming more important with increases in the number of hybrid vehicles on the road and overall electronic content in vehicles, as well as the introduction of start-stop systems. [via]

Freescale introduces intelligent sensor for car battery monitoring - [Link]

A competition is running on element14 community. The “Summer of Design” competition revolves around programming an accelerometer and MCU based development board to find an innovative application.

We are giving away 100 free XL_Star boards to the first 100 entrants to the competition, and offering up a prize bundle as follows:

• -A trip to a Freescale Competency Centre
• -CadSoft EAGLE licenses (either for the individual, or a whole department if they are a student)
• -£250 Farnell/Newark vouchers
• -Inclusion in our “road-tests”

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 18 and runs until September.

Summer of Design competition – see your design excel, win amazing prizes! - [Link]

dangerousprototypes.com writes:

Freescale’s MC13260 System-on-chip two-way radio is one chip to watch for. Now in the “introduction pending” stage and highlighted in this video from the recent FTF 2011 conference, it promises to be a one chip analog/digital radio solution.

Preliminary design specs show RF coverage from 60-960 MHz, comprehensive digital radio mode coverage including DMR, dPMR, P25 and Tetra, dual mode analog FM and digital voice/data, and ‘Talk around the network’ capability for cellular applications. The MC13260 includes an ARM926EJ-STM MCU operating at clock speeds up to 150 MHz, a modem processor (software-defined radio) operating at clock speeds up to 100 MHz, 640 Kbytes of integrated RAM, MCU peripherals to support control and monitoring functions and onboard DAC and ADC. The chip is a full-speed USB device with Integrated PHY. The chip supply voltage is 2.775V with on-chip LDO voltage regulators.

This looks like a RF hackers dream chip.

Packaging will be a 104 pin dual row laminate QFN making it somewhat of a challenge to work with. We can only imagine what the price will be, but the early specs sure make it look interesting.

Freescale’s MC13260 two-way radio chip – [Link]

ghmicro.com writes:

I designed a keypad board for the Freescale MPR121 Capacitive Touch Sensor Controller chip and received it in my latest batch of boards from dorkbotpdx.org. I’m really happy with this one. The MPR121 is really easy to use and, though it has tons of internal adjustments and controls to suit almost any sensing job, works perfectly with all default settings for my little board.

MPR121 Touch Sensor Controller – [Link]

Freescale Semiconductor has announced a new magnetometer chip for mobile devices incorporating magnetic compass capability, which it claims is smaller and consumes less power than competing devices. The Xtrinsic MAG3110 three-axis sensor can be used to determine headings for navigation, dead-reckoning, and various location-based services (LBSs). The MAG3110 is a quarter of the size of the currently most commonly used magnetometer chip, and its current consumption is only 25 μA, also a quarter or less that that of competing devices. [via]

Freescale shrinks magnetic compass chip - [Link]

Virtualcogs is a stackable system based around the Freescale Semiconductor i.MX21 multimedia ARM9 processor. This SBC measures only 2″x1.75″ in size and features 64MB SDRAM, 16MB of FLASH memory, onboard USB and is compatible with any of the Virtual Cogs VC21 series accessory boards.

Specifications

• Freescale Semiconductor i.MX21 ARM9 Multimedia Processor
• Onboard 64MB Highspeed SDRAM
• Onboard 16MB NOR FLASH
• Power Over USB Capability
• USB<->Serial Port for Easy Interfacing
• Pass-Thru Bus Design Allow Stacking with Many Accessory COGS
• Full JTAG Access
• Two M2 mounting holes

Virtualcogs: A stackable system - [Link]

Embedded web applications are always exiting. Once device is connected to internet, you can have access and control from anywhere including cell phone. Weather station is a modular structure which consist of AVR based web server and sensor board. There are two LM335 temperature sensors and Freescale MPX4115A absolute pressure sensor attached. There is also a wind measurement sensor planned.

A weather station with a build-in web server - [Link]