A new Piccolo family of microcontrollers from Texas Instruments (TI) offers real-time embedded designers a higher level of integration by combining the CPU and memory with a series of built-in peripheral modules including a 12-bit analog to digital converter, enhanced pulse width modulators (ePWMs), on-chip oscillators, analog comparators, communication interfaces, and general purpose I/O. To simplify development of Piccolo-based projects, TI just announced the $39 controlSTICK evaluation tool in a USB stick form factor. The controlSTICK comes with a 32 KB limited Code Composer Studio Integrated development Environment (IDE) plus example projects that walk through Piccolo MCUs’ functionality, from simply blinking an LED to configuring the ePWM peripherals. For more advanced applications, TI also offers a $79 Experimenter’s Kit that allows designers to develop and prototype complete Piccolo MCU-based projects.