Atmel's latest AVR 8-bit microcontroller is a low pin-count device aimed at automotive LIN networking applications.

With car body electronic subsystems including door lock, window lift, wiper, light system, sun, and rain sensors are connected via LIN networks, there is a requirement for low cost LIN controllers with analogue-to-digital converters for sensor signal formatting and a versatile 16-bit timer.

As a result of the collaboration with software firm Vector a complete hardware and LIN2.1 software networking design is available.

Due to tightly integrated hardware routines, the code size for LIN is reduced to about 1Kbyte of flash leaving about 7kbyte of flash available for the user application.

The ATtiny87 includes hardware LIN UART with automatic baud-rate synchronisation in slave mode. The frame processing requests only 2 interrupts; one for LIN identifier available and one for transmit or receive completed.

Atmel's AVR Studio and AVR JTAGICE mkII provide a multiplatform integrated development environment (IDE). The STK 600 with STK600-SOIC add-on starter kit is available to start development.

More information: www.atmel.com