Playing action video games can boost an aspect of adult vision previously thought to be fixed, a US study shows.Read the full news story on BBC News.Researchers found playing the games improved the ability to notice even very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background.
The PICDEM Touch Sense 2 Demonstration Board provides a complete platform introducing Microchip's mTouch Sensing Solutions employing the 16-bit PIC24F MCU. It features the Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU) for fast capacitive touch sensing without additional external components.
Factory programmed firmware provides immediate access to all the boards features through the use of the accompanying Windows-based diagnostic tool. The diagnostic tool provides a platform to analyze application critical information in real time as it relates to touch sensor behavior.
Features:
Learn more at http://www.microchip.com/mtouch
Microchip announced the PICDEMTM Lab Development Kit (part # DM163035), a comprehensive, entry-level development platform for all of Microchip's 8-bit Flash PICR microcontrollers (MCUs) with 20 or fewer pins. Geared toward educators, students and those who are new to microcontrollers, the PICDEM Lab Development Kit comes complete with a development board containing five popular 8-bit PIC MCUs; a bag of discrete components; a PICkit 2 Debugger/Programmer; and a CD containing a User's Guide, labs and application examples. The kit provides everything needed to quickly and easily develop applications using Microchip's 8-bit PIC MCUs.Read the full press release here.
Microchip today announced it has acquired HI-TECH Software, a world-class provider of development tools for embedded systems based in Brisbane, Australia. Best known for its high-performance ANSI C compilers, featuring the optimizing, whole-program compilation technology, Omniscient Code Generation, HI-TECH Software has been a premier third-party provider of C compilers for Microchip’s 8-, 16- and 32-bit PIC® microcontrollers (MCUs) and dsPIC® Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs) for over a decade.From now until September 30, 2009, Microchip is offering a 20% discount on Microchip development tools for HI-TECH customers through http://www.microchipdirect.com, and a 50% exchange discount to owners of HI-TECH compilers for non-Microchip products. Please contact HI-TECH for details.
Read the full press release here.
Amazon.com announced
a new program for customers to trade in used video game titles in return for credit at Amazon.com. The program is launching with around 1,500 titles, all of which can be filtered and searched by platform. Once users have picked out the games they own and would like to exchange for credit, Amazon provides a pre-paid label that covers the cost of shipping. Amazon is offering those who trade in their games for credit a 10 percent markdown on games or video game accessories in the next two weeks. for more detailsStudent Edition renamed Evaluation Version -- The student edition has been renamed the valuation version. This release also introduces a new academic version.
Improved 16- and 32-bit FFT functions in the DSP Library -- The FFT functions have been significantly improved and optimized for the PIC32 instruction set. See the 32-bit Language Tools Libraries document (DS51685) for more information. Please visit Microchip's website for the revision C of this document (DS51685C).
Binary Constants -- A sequence of binary digits preceded by 0b or 0B (the numeral '0' followed by the letter 'b' or 'B') is taken to be a binary integer. The binary digits consist of the numerals '0' and '1'. Note that this binary-constant syntax may not be accepted by other C compilers.
Linker Memory-Usage Report -- This optional, informational report allows you to easily determine the program- and data-memory usage of your application. It allows you to see how much space is used by the project being linked and how much space is available on the target device. The memory-usage report appears on stdout and in the optional map file.
Improved malloc implementation -- This release contains a new malloc/free/realloc implementation based on the implementation written by Doug Lea and released to the public domain.
Instruction Macros -- The p32xxxx.h include file now contains a Nop() macro that issues a superscalar SSNOP instruction.
gettimeofday() weak stub -- The time.h clock() and time() functions require a user-provided gettimeofday() helper function. The compiler's library now provides a weak stub implementation that allows the project link to complete without error, but you should provide your own implementation appropriate for your application.
Microchip DSP Compatibility Wrapper functions -- This release provides new DSP wrapper functions intended to ease the migration from the Microchip DSP library for dsPIC DSCs to the general DSP library for PIC32 MCUs. See the 32-Bit Language Tools Libraries (DS51685C) document for more information on these new wrapper functions.
Updated peripheral-library documentation -- The 32-bit peripheral library document is now distributed as a compiled help file (*.chm) rather than a PDF file.
Support for PWP configuration bits -- The config pragma now supports enabling the Program Write Protect bits. See the PIC32MX Config Settings help file for information on the setting name and available values for each device.
. The book describes the PIC32 microcontroller and has many useful examples in C. Keep in mind that this is not an introductory C language book; It expects you to be familiar with C programming already.
