Microchip announces the 12-member PIC24FJ256GB1 microcontroller (MCU) family, which it claims is the lowest power (2.6 µA standby current) large-memory (up to 256 KB Flash and 16 KB RAM) 16-bit USB microcontroller family on the market.

The PIC24FJ256GB1 family integrates USB 2.0 device, embedded-host, dual-role and On-the-Go (OTG) functionality, making it cost effective and easy to add advanced USB features to embedded designs.

Microchip also provides complete software support, via free USB class drivers and applications. Applications such as reading and writing to Flash drives, interfacing to wireless networks, and system updates are all enabled through this complete, cost-effective USB microcontroller family.

In addition, the integrated Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU) peripheral—along with the royalty-free mTouch Sensing Solution software development kit—enables designers to add a capacitive-touch user interface without any external components. Combining this with Microchip’s free QVGA Graphics Software Library, engineers have access to a cost-effective, USB-enabled user interface solution.

The devices offer up to four UARTs, three SPI ports and three I2C™ ports to expand control capabilities and also feature the “Peripheral Pin Select” pin-mapping function, which provides advanced I/O flexibility by enabling designers to map digital peripherals to different pins.

To allow design re-use, the PIC24FJ256GB1 family maintains pin, peripheral and software compatibility with Microchip’s 32-bit USB microcontroller family. Microchip’s complete portfolio of 8-, 16- and 32-bit devices is supported by a single Integrated Development Environment—the free MPLAB IDE.