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Element14, the collaborative global electronics community established by Premier Farnell, has teamed up with Microchip and Matrix to introduce the new PIC18 Flowcode Developers Kit. This development and demonstration kit is designed to offer a hands-on, easy approach to electronics design using Flowcode, one of the world’s most advanced graphical programming languages for microcontrollers.
The development platform is based on a Microchip low power, 8-bit PIC18F26J50 microcontroller, and is integrated with temperature sensor, capacitor touch sensor and potentiometer to help developers verify programs designed using Flowcode.
“The PIC18 Flowcode Developers Kit is a fully featured low cost solution designed to help developers realise their designs in working hardware,” says Mike Powell, Technology Development Manager, Premier Farnell. “Optimised for Flowcode development, the board has several expansion options, it can be used as a black box and is mounted with a PIC 18 device that is low power, but high performance.
Flowcode’s main competitive advantage is that it allows those with little-to-no programming experience to create electronic systems in minutes. It supports code generation for the PIC (PIC12, PIC16, and PIC18 series ), PIC24 and dsPIC series of microcontrollers. 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-232RS-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.
