Microchip Technology (News - Alert), a provider of microcontroller, analog and Flash-IP solutions, announced a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) PICtail Daughter Board.

The M2M PICtail Daughter Board comes with hardware, wireless-communication protocols and application-code examples needed to help designers start their fleet-management or location-based service application.

“The M2M PICtail Daughter Board provides developers with an easy-to-use, economical platform for the development of fleet-management, asset-tracking and telematic applications, among others,” said Sumit Mitra, vice president of Microchip’s High-Performance Microcontroller Division, in a statement.

Together with the Multimedia Expansion Board and PIC32 Starter Kit, Microchip provides a flexible solution that enables customers to get to market sooner, according to Mitra.

The new Daughter Board is developed with u-blox (News - Alert). u-blox is a fabless semiconductor provider of embedded positioning and wireless communication solutions for the consumer, industrial and automotive markets.

Microchip’s new M2M Daughter Board includes u-blox NEO-6Q GPS and LEON GSM/GPRS modules, and interfaces with Microchip’s Multimedia Expansion Board and PIC32 Starter Kit. The expansion board enables the easy creation of designs offering communications, as well as a complete graphics interface, with audio, accelerometer and networking capabilities.

“As a leading provider of embedded GPS and wireless communications technology in the market for telematics applications, we are pleased that Microchip has chosen to partner with us to develop the M2M PICtail solution. With this platform, our customers can drastically cut their development time and bring their products to market more quickly,” said Thomas Nigg, vice president of product marketing at u-blox.

Recently, Microchip Technology announced the expansion of its MOSFET driver family of products. Microchip is introducing the new low-side MCP14E6/7/8 2A and MCP14E9/10/11 3A drivers. The expanded, low-cost family of devices is rated for peak output currents from 2A to 4.5A, over a wide operating voltage range of 4.5V to 18V. 


Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell