Online distributor and design community element14 has teamed up with Microchip and Matrix to introduce the PIC18 Flowcode developers kit.
The demonstration kit is designed to offer an entry-level approach to Flowcode, an advanced graphical programming languages for microcontrollers.
A claim for Flowcode is that it allows those with little-to-no programming experience to create electronic systems in minutes. Flowcode supports code generation for the PIC (PIC12, PIC16, and PIC18 series ), PIC24 and dsPIC series of microcontrollers.
The development platform is based on a Microchip PIC18F26J50 8-bit microcontroller, and is integrated with temperature sensor, capacitor touch sensor and potentiometer to help developers verify programs designed using Flowcode.
“The new PIC18 Flowcode developers kit is a fully featured yet low cost solution designed to help developers realise their designs in working hardware,” said Mike Powell, technology development manager at Premier Farnell.
The board has been optimised for Flowcode development and has several expansion options, it can be used as a black box and is mounted with a PIC 18 device.
The professional edition includes drivers for a range of sub-systems including LCDs, keypads, seven-segment displays, ADC and PWM, as well as communication protocols including I2C, SPI, RS-232, Zigbee and TCP/IP, among others.
Flowcode is compatible with Microchip’s PICkit programmer as well as third party programmers. It is also compatible with the HI-TECH C compiler. A ‘Lite’ version of Flowcode 4 is included in the kit.
www.element14.com