Microchip Technology Inc., announced the availability of a Microchip dsPIC33 Digital Signal Controller (DSC)-based development kit. The Digilent® Cerebot™ MC7 Development Kit addresses the growing interest in embedded motor control from the academic and hobbyist markets, and is ideal for learning about microcontrollers and solving real problems. The kit includes a demonstration board that provides four half-bridge circuits, eight RC servo motor connectors, the ability to use Digilent Pmod™ peripheral modules, and an integrated programming/debugging circuit that is compatible with the free MPLAB® IDE. Example applications include university embedded-systems and communications classes, senior capstone projects, and numerous other academic and hobbyist projects.

 

A video demo of the kit can be viewed on YouTube (link below).

 

The Cerebot MC7 board features four half-bridge circuits that are rated for 24 V at up to 5 A. These half bridges can be used to control two Brushed DC motors, two bi-polar stepper motors, one brushless DC motor, and one uni-polar stepper motor. An onboard 5 V, 4 A switching regulator with an input voltage up to 24 V simplifies operation of the board, enabling it to operate from a single power supply in embedded applications such as robotics. The onboard dsPIC33 DSC features 128 KB internal Flash program memory and 16 KB internal SRAM, as well as numerous on-chip peripherals, including an advanced 8-channel motor-control PWM unit, an enhanced CAN controller, two Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPIs), timer/counters, serial-interface controllers, an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), and more. The Cerebot MC7 board combines two push buttons and four LEDs for user I/O, as well as connections for two I2C™ busses, one of which contains an integrated serial EEPROM device.