RS hosts Microchip seminars.

 We have now had 2 out of 3 successful Microchip seminars held at Corby and Bristol RS locations in the UK.   The final seminar in this series will be held in France. http://secure.microchip.com/RTCV2/ViewSeminarDetail.aspx?SeminarDetailID=2807.  All attendees went away armed with lots of applications ideas from the discussions and with a goody bag which amongst other items included a Microchip evaluation kit, USB stick and a DesignSparkPCB CD.    

The event covered many hot topics including:

Smart Energy

 Learnt about Smart Energy trends and design challenges, the Google Power Meter and other solutions that enable communication to the smart grid and the home area network.

 Optimum Energy Usage -
Discussions on how to minimize the application power consumption to maximize battery life or minimize line power drawn with Microchip XLP PIC^® microcontrollers and analogue products.

Products highlighted here was the MCP1624 boost converter to boost the voltage required to run a display from a single AAAA battery cell.   For the associated demo board and reference design see www.microchip.com/aaaa

Smart Power

Discussions on Smart Energy trends and design challenges when changing technologies from analogue power supplies to energy efficient digitally controlled power supplies.   Please see www.microchip.com/smps for more detail and reference designs.

Energy Measurement

As legislation and interest in energy consumption increases, engineers need more accurate measurement devices.  We discussed MCP3901 device which exceeds accuracies in all classes of energy meter designs. http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/51915A.pdf

Touch Screen Sensing and Graphical Displays -
The delegates learnt how to add graphical displays and touch sensing to an application, evaluating the choice of projected capacitive or analogue-resistive touch technology.

Exploring MPLAB^® IDE Development Tools –

A look at the latest from Microchip tools with a guide through the updates including a free graphic display designer and library for easy implementation of complex displays

 Connectivity Solutions for Embedded Designs -
Learnt how to choose the right connectivity option including Ethernet, WiFi (802.11), and ZigBee^® (802.15.4), MiWi^TM for embedded products.  Take a look at DM320004 http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=searchProducts&searchTerm=DM320004&x=0&y=0 as a good starting point for Ethernet connectivity.

If you are interested but unable to attend the seminars there is an opportunity to attend the virtual seminar at  www.microchip.com/virtualEDF