News and New Products

Single-chip device targets energy metering

By Robert Cravotta -- EDN, 9/25/2003

Texas Instruments’ MSP430FE42x family of processors can reduce the component count and increase the overall reliability for energy-metering applications. An integrated ESP (embedded signal processor) offloads the energy-measurement functions from the main processor and can provide a 0.1% accurate energy measurement over a dynamic current range of 1000 to 1. The ESP interfaces with a temperature sensor, a precision voltage reference, three programmable gain amplifiers, and three independent 16-bit sigma-delta ADCs operating at an oversampled rate of 1 MHz.

Operating at 3V, the MSP430FE42x draws 2.5 mA of power when the both processor core and the embedded signal processor are active. The device can operate in standby mode with a typical current draw of 1.1 μA while supporting an active real-time clock function. The integrated peripheral set on these devices includes an LCD driver for as many as 128 segments, brownout protection, supply-voltage supervisor, three-channel pulse-width-modulation timer, and serial communication interface that supports serial onboard programming.

The $99 MSP-FET430P410 JTAG emulation tool kit supports development for MSP430FE42x devices and includes a target board with software-development tools. The MSP430FE42x offers 8, 16, or 32 kbytes of on-chip Flash and 256 to 1024 bytes of RAM in a 64-pin QFP (quad-flat-pad) package. The devices are sampling now with production scheduled for late 2003. The 8-kbyte MSP430FE423 is available for $4.85 (1000).

Texas Instruments, www.ti.com.