The new Cerebot MX7 cK board from Digilent is essentially a PIC32 chipKIT^TM Max32, a chipKIT Network Shield, and an MPLAB PICkit 3 all on a single board. At just US $99.99, that's a great deal. I haven't had a chance to play with one myself yet, but the value is obvious just from the description. I can't wait to try it out. For more info, visit http://bit.ly/CerebotMX7cK

The Cerebot MX7cK is a microcontroller development board based on the Microchip PIC32MX795F512L, a member of the 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller family. It is compatible with Digilent’s line of Pmod™ peripheral modules, and is suitable for use with the Microchip MPLAB® IDE tools. The Cerebot MX7cK is also compatible for use with the chipKIT™ MPIDE development environment. ChipKIT and MPIDE is a PIC32 based system compatible with many existing Arduino™ code examples, reference materials and other resources. 

The Cerebot MX7cK is designed to be easy to use and suitable for use by anyone from beginners to advanced users for experimenting with embedded control and network communications application. A built in programming/debugging circuit compatible with the Microchip MPLAB® IDE is provided, so no additional hardware is required for use with MPLAB. The kit contains everything needed to start developing embedded applications using either the MPLAB® IDE or the MPIDE. 

The Cerebot MX7cK provides 52 I/O pins that support a number of peripheral functions, such as UART, SPI and I2C™ ports as well as five pulse width modulated outputs and five external interrupt inputs. Its network and communications features also include a 10/100 Ethernet interface, Full Speed USB 2.0 OTG interface, and dual CAN network interfaces. Ten of the I/O pins can be used as analog inputs in addition to their use as digital inputs and outputs. The Cerebot MX7cK can be powered in various ways via USB, or using an external AC-DC power adapter.

DesignSpark's chipKIT Challenge Open for Entry

RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the world’s leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, announced full details of its DesignSpark chipKIT™ Challenge, a global competition launching on 28 November 2011. Registration and further information can be found at: www.chipkitchallenge.com

Run in partnership with Elektor and Circuit Cellar magazines across Europe, Asia Pacific and the US, the chipKIT Challenge is an online competition that challenges electronics design engineers, students and hobbyists to produce an energy efficient, eco-friendly design. Entrants will use the award-winning, free-of-charge DesignSpark PCB software tool from RS and the Digilent chipKIT Max32™ development platform featuring the 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller from Microchip Technology, a leading provider of microcontroller, analogue and Flash-IP solutions, to realise their designs.

A panel of judges, comprising design engineers and experts, has been established to evaluate the projects based on a range of criteria including energy efficiency, originality, usefulness, and design optimisation. The competition winners will share a total cash prize of US$10,000. During the competition entrants will also be encouraged to share ideas and post updates to the RS online DesignSpark community and automatically qualify for a bonus Community Choice Award as well as entry into prize draws.

Visit www.chipkitchallenge.com for more information

Digilent chipKIT™ Basic I/O Shield™ & Network Shield™ Introduction

Digilent is proud to introduce two new expansion boards designed for use with the chipKIT™ line of Arduino™-compatible 32-bit microcontroller boards. They are the chipKIT Basic I/O Shield™ and the chipKIT Network Shield™. These expansion boards greatly increase the power and flexibility of chipKIT microcontroller boards, giving beginners more options while allowing advanced users to increase the scope of their designs.

Brian Schmalz's Soft PWM and Servo Library for PIC32 chipKIT

From Brian:

Just got done writing a soft PWM and Servo library for MPIDE/ChipKIT (any PIC32 board actually). It can do PWM and/or RC Servo outputs on all I/O pins simultaneously. (Max 85 pins at once.) I only had 10 RC servos handy, so I hooked them all up to demonstrate. I'm running the AllPinsServo.pde example sketch that comes with the library.

Notice that some of the servos are continuous rotation (why they rotate so fast) and some of them are kinda on the fritz, so they jerk a bit. (This is NOT due to the software library I'm demonstrating, it's the fault of the servos.)

More information, as well as the source to the library will be posted to the ChipKit forums in the next day or two.

Known issues with MPLAB C Compiler for PIC32 MCUs v2.00

Microchip TCP/IP Stack compatibility

Older versions of the TCP/IP stack had references to macros referencing debug freeze bits such as _SPI2CON_FRZ_MASK. The macros for these freeze bits should never have appeared in the processor header files and application code should not have been using them. The definitions were removed for the C32 v2.00 release. The July 2011 release of the Microchip Application Library with TCP/IP Stack version 5.36.2 removes references to these macros to correct compatibility with MPLAB C32 v2.00. Download the update here: http://www.microchip.com/mal

Peripheral Library - UART2

The UART peripheral library functions do not work correctly for the UART2 module on the PIC32MX3 and PIC32MX4 devices. The device-support include files pic32mx/include/proc/p32mx3.h and pic32mx/include/proc/p32mx4*.h contain an incorrect base address for the UART2 peripheral.

#define _UART2_BASE_ADDRESS 0xBF806800
should be
#define _UART2_BASE_ADDRESS 0xBF806200
for the PICMX3 and PIC32MX4 devices.

This causes the peripheral library functions for the UART2 to access unimplemented SFR addresses rather than the correct UART2 SFR addresses.

One workaround is to correct the _UART2_BASE_ADDRESS address value in your pic32mx/include/proc/pic32mx*.h header file and add a copy of the [C:\Program Files\Microchip\mplabc32\v2.00\pic32-libs\peripheral\uart\source\uart_lib.c] source file to your project.

Uninitialized data clearing

Uninitialized global variables should be cleared to zero on startup. There is an issue with the v2.00 startup code where variables allocated in the "common" section are not correctly zeroed on startup. One workaround is to disable support for commons by adding the compiler option "-fno-common" to the alternate settings field for your project. Another workaround is to modify the C startup code as described in this web forum post. http://www.microchip.com/forums/fb.ashx?m=588408

Exception when using a Custom Linker Script

The default startup code is initializing the bus matrix as if ram functions exist in a project, even when no such ram functions exist. This causes a problem whenever the end address of the kseg1_data_mem region is not 2k aligned in a custom linker script, since the bus matrix registers must be 2k aligned. To workaround the issue for now, add the following line to your custom linker script: _ramfunc_begin = 0;
This causes the startup code to skip over the bus-matrix initialization code.

Getting Support

For technical support, please visit either the community web forum or http://www.microchip.com/support. To report a bug, please visit this forum post for instructions. Thanks!

chipKIT Videos

The chipKIT boards from Digilent Inc have been available for a few months now and it looks like the community is starting to show off some impressive and fun projects. Take a look at the videos.