Anablog

I just received a note from the effervescent Michelle Ragsdale over at Microchip about their Embedded Designers Forum this fall at locations across the US, Europe, Asia and worldwide, 120 locations in all. Cost is 25 dollars plus tax. Attendees will receive a substantial discount on select Microchip development tools, as well as a free, hands-on training class at any of Microchip's 37 worldwide Regional Training Centers. You will have to register on Microchip’s website where they have a shopping cart system that lets you purchase your class. North American schedule is below. The press release says they are going to New Zealand but the website does not show that, so I suspect they have not put in the 2010 schedule yet.

This series of classes is distinct from their hugely popular Masters Classes they do every year. You can a week of training from experts. The one in Phoenix was Aug 1^st so you missed that for this year. Cost for that is $1295.00 for three days lodging, meals and classes. The 2-day pre-training is separate deal costing $995 for lodging meals and entertainment (?). The class listing from 2009 is pretty amazing. I expect the prices to go up for 2010 but I am sure it will be just as comprehensive an event. Think about it.

Back to the Designers Forums, I have a pet peeve with engineers who seem unable to call the same things the same names, so let me help all you out with the C-type-declaration kinda thing: Module = = Session. So when you go to the top of the Microchip webpage and see the tab “modules” those are the same things that they call “Sessions” a little further down the page. I once remembered puzzling over a datasheet for ten minutes until I figured out that BP was the same as blanking pin. I guess we are expected to know things like that. OK, so as to those modules, here they are:

Lower Your System Power with the World's Lowest Sleep Power MCU

Lowering power consumption is a key requirement in today’s portable battery powered, mains powered and energy harvesting designs. Discover the advantages of Microchip’s new PIC® Microcontrollers (MCUs) with nanoWatt XLP Technology, including the specific features in these eXtreme Low Power MCUs that reduce power consumption. Learn about various applications that can benefit from the world’s lowest sleep current and see an example of a low power application using a PIC MCU with XLP technology. This session also includes demonstrations of Microchip’s XLP development tools.

• How to get the longest possible life from your battery
• Which PIC MCUs feature the world’s lowest sleep current at 20 nA
• How to achieve low power integration for simple (Real-time Clock/Calendar, Watchdog Timer) to complex peripherals (USB, Touch, LCD)

Design in C with the New 32MHz PIC16F1 Family of 8-bit Microcontrollers

The next generation 8-bit architecture of the PIC16F19XX offers increased memory capacity, more efficient C code and performance of up to 32MHz. This session provides an overview of the enhancements made to the PIC16F1 architecture, its lower power consumption and improvements to the peripheral set of the PIC16F19XX devices. This session uses the new F1 Evaluation Board to demonstrate low power, motor control and LCD applications.

• How to lower BOM cost, shorten development time and increase end product differentiation with the new PIC16F19XX family
• How this new PIC16F1 architecture provides increased memory capacity, more efficient C code, and faster performance
• How to extend battery life while adding touch sensing, LCD displays and motor control to your embedded design

Expand Your Application with 32-bit Performance

As your embedded applications become increasingly more complex, learn how Microchip’s 32-bit PIC® Microcontrollers (MCUs) solve this challenge with best-in-class performance and a vast offering of free and commercially available software. Discover the resources available for a wide range of applications such as graphics, USB On-The-Go and Ethernet networking. This session also offers a preview of the next-generation PIC32 family.

• How the best-in-class performance of the PIC32 MCU family enables you to run more software stacks simultaneously
• How to reduce your software development time with a wide offering of free and commercial software available for the PIC32
• About the resources available for applications needing graphical displays, USB On-the-Go, and Ethernet networking

Add LCD and Graphics Displays to Your Products

Adding segmented LCD or graphics capabilities to your embedded applications can help differentiate your design and allow for regional and local language customization. Learn how Microchip can reduce your development time with a wide variety of 8-, 16- and 32-bit PIC® Microcontrollers (MCUs) with integrated LCD and graphics peripherals. Discover how Microchip’s free visual design tools, free software libraries and low cost development boards, can accelerate your time to market. This session discusses the software and microcontroller peripherals available to develop low-cost, segmented LCD and full-featured graphical display applications.

• How to simplify display applications with Microchip’s segmented LCD and graphics MCU portfolio
• To accelerate your time to market with free visual design tools and software libraries
• Which cost effective segmented LCD and graphics development boards are available to accelerate your time to market

Improve Your User Interfaces Using Touch Sense Technology

Modern, feature-rich user interfaces as seen in popular consumer devices, can help to differentiate your products. This session shows you how to utilize Microchip’s capacitive, inductive and analog-resistive touch sensing technology, along with open source software to customize your applications user interface. Discover Microchip’s unique solution that enables you to implement touch sensing through metal, and provides reliable operation in wet environments. Learn how to select the correct touch technology for your design requirements, and utilize free source code, development boards and turnkey products to get to market quickly.

• Which applications are best-suited for capacitive, inductive or analog-resistive touch sensing
• How to easily add touch sensing to your application with free source code
• About the easy-to-use development boards that support keypads, buttons and sliders

Integrate USB Connectivity into Your Embedded Design

USB has rapidly moved into a variety of embedded applications, replacing serial and parallel communications ports, while also adding an increased level of performance and functionality. Learn how to get to market faster by using Microchip’s scalable USB PIC® Microcontrollers (MCUs), free USB software libraries, free device drivers and low cost USB development tools. The session includes an overview of how the software, tools and microcontrollers can be used to create Peripheral, Embedded Host or On-The-Go (OTG) applications.

• About Microchip’s complete hardware and software solutions for USB Peripheral, Embedded Host, and OTG applications
• How to greatly speed your time-to-market with complete, free USB software stacks and device drivers
• About the complete set of scalable development tools to accelerate any USB design

The schedule, alphabetical by city, RTC means Regional Training Center

By date, RTC means regional training center: