We give away 1000 boards worth EUR 25000 on Embedded World 2016 – 23-25 of February in Nuremberg Germany – the biggest event in Europe for development boards and tools

Embedded World 2016 is as usually held in Nuremberg, Germany in February.

We are there exhibiting in hall 2, booth 2-651.

What we will show you there?

Our super duper new Internet of Things WiFi-PLUG, WiFi-SWITCH and WiFi-Dimmer, all of them based on ESP8266 and allowing easy to setup Home Automation. They work with mains power supply 85-240VAC 50/60Hz and are with small 40 x 35 x 12 mm so can fit inside existing power supply sockets.

Also we will show you our new BLE development boards and Bluetooth audio.

And of course there will be our Open Source DIY Laptop powered by A64-OLinuXino.

For these who remember several times we give away free boards on Embedded World.

This year will be no exeption. We are planning promotion together with Microchip and work on new board with their PIC32MZ0512EFE064-I/PT which will have these features:

– PIC32MZ running at 200 MHz/330 DMIPS, MIPS Warrior M-class core
– Flash 512KB
– RAM 128 KB
– 4x SPI 50Mbps, 4x I2C up to 1Mbps, I2S, 6x UARTS 25 Mbps
– temp sensor +-2C
– USB-OTG
– USB host HIGH Speed
– ADC 12bit, 24 channels, 18 Msps
– 9x PWM
– 10/100 Mb Ethernet
– OLED 128×64 pixels
– Analog input for microphone
– Analog output for headphones
– micro SD card
– industrial grade -25C+85C

This board will be add to our web shop after the show and will be priced at EUR 25.00 but note! On Embedded world we will give away free of charge 1000 of these worth EUR 25 000!

How you can get one?

Past experience show that people like to get freebies even if they have no use of them, small kids, 70 years old developers, all they came to our booth and ask for free boards, but we doubt they use the boards afterward which is pitty.

This board is quite good with industrial temperature specs, 18Msps ADCs, and fast UARTs, SPIs, I2Ss, so we really do not want these boards to go to someone who will have no use of them and just will let the board collect dust in the table corner, so if you want to get one of these boards send us to info@olimex.com email with link to web page with project you already have done with other Olimex boards.

Interesting projects and open source projects will have advantage, so please think twice before submitting your blink LED done with something :))).

We will confirm with email back that we have booked board for you which you can take on Embedded World.

If you have no ticket let us know we will generate free ticket for you as exhibitor we can do this, these tickets otherwise are expensive, so prepare yourself well 🙂

For these who do not have chance to come to Embedded World, but still have interesting project, if the project is interesting enough we can decide to cover shipping by post. The boards which will be shipped by post will be shipped after Embedded World i.e. about end of February.

The last date to send us link with your project is February 22nd.

You guys will buy your AVRs from … Microchip from now on :)

It’s done! The painful and slow sinking of Atmel seems to be over now.

We knew for a long time that thing do not go well with Atmel due to their poor management. The Arduino wave kept them for a while above the water level, but in September 2015 they announced that are about to sign with the world unknown company Dialog Semiconductor deal for $4.8 billions mostly with shares exchange, but as the time pass the shares of Dialog Semiconductor went down and this deal was looking not so attractive as before, and Microchip offer for $3.56 billions in shares become more attractive!

Microchip in other hand continue to expand and never have been better – they are buying company after company and already have the IC portfolio of SMSC, MICREL, SST, Novocell etc etc and what is better, each time they buy company they improve the availability and make these chips more easier to buy and deal with. This with the nice application notes and support is the Microchip receipt for success.

Our experience with SMSC and MICREL was that these companies were working with just big customers and smaller companies couldn’t buy directly, while Microchip sales channels can satisfy both big and small customers. After Microchip bought  these companies, they improved the availability and made these chips easier to buy for the small customers. Atmel is in the same state – probably this was the major reason to sink, although Atmel have similar products like Microchip and even better open source software support, they sales are terrible hard to deal with. Many components prices go unexpected up and down as Atmel production capabilities are humble, once some big customer place large order for one chip they stop making others and this make impossible to use them for serious projects. Once you put AVR in your product it is not unlikely these chips suddenly to go on allocation due to the poor management and planning Altmel has, something which (almost) never happen to Microchip.

I guess Microchip will not cut AVRs supply but it’s unlickely they will keep developing this line when they put so much efforts in the PICs, to keep duplicate development teams for similar products is not practically. More probably is they to invest in ARM line expansion as this is something they missed yet.

For years Microchip top management was like mule on bridge not wanting to step ahead 🙂 They were refusing to buy ARM licensee and bet on MIPS and they were missing a lot of sale opportunities with this odd decision. Whatever they do with PIC32 it’s not so successful like the STM32s and LPCs and they miss sales for millions $$$. This is not because MIPS architecture is bad, quite opposite it’s well developed in networking devices, but MIPS Soc from Mediatek running Linux at 400Mhz cost $2 while Microchip sells MIPS PIC32 with no MMU running at 80Mhz for $5-6.

Now with Atmel they got lot of ARM licensees and with their efficient manufacturing and great sale channels this give them access to the ARM sale market and other companies got strong competitor.

New PIC32-HMZ144 Open Source Hardware development board is in stock

PIC32-HMZ144 is low cost development board for the new PIC32MZ2048HCM144 processor from Microchip with these features:

• PIC32MZ2048EHC144 512KB RAM 2MB Flash
• USB-OTG
• uSD card
• ICSP for debug and programming
• JTAG pins exposed on 0.1″ step 6 pins
• EXT1 and EXT2 50 pin 0.1″ connectors for all PIC ports
• RESET and USER buttons
• PWR and STATUS LEDs
• LiPo battery charger and connector
• UEXT connector
• Dimensions: 77 x 52 mm

PIC32MZ2048HCM144 is high performance MIPS core processor from Microchip with 10-bit, 500 KSPS, 48-channel ADC module, MMU for real time OS support, CAN, UART, I2C, PMP, EBI, SQI & Analog Comparators, SPI/I2S interfaces for audio processing and playback, Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Device/Host/OTG, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC with MII and RMII interface.

Another board with Ethernet and LCD is on the way, PIC32MZ2048 is good candidate to run RetroBSD

PIC-WEB-BOX demo video

 

PIC-WEB-BOX is embedded PIC web server using Microchip’s Open Source TCP-IP stack with two buttons, RS232 interface, UEXT connector, two GPIO connectors, Status LED, 2GB Sd card for web storage. The power supply can be in range 9-30VDC and the low consumption makes this board perfect for controlling things over internet or to read sensors etc.

We setup video where you can see how easy is to program it and using the build-in bootloader you can change PIC-WEB-BOX firmware over the net via TFTP.

UART, I2C, SPI interfaces are available and the video demonstrate how you can drive 4.3″ LCD, Relays, measure temperature with thermocouple etc.

SD card with 2GB is build-in for web storage.

PIC-WEB-BOX is with small enclosure.