Cypress USB Thumbdrive PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit

Cypress introduced its PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit for development of PSoC (Programmable System-on-Chip) mixed-signal arrays products. The Starter Kit, working with Cypress's PSoC Express visual embedded system design tool, provides developers with CapSense touch, light, temperature, and CapSense proximity sensing.

Cypress’USB Thumbdrive PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit

Benefits and features of Cypress’ PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit:

• Single Platform - Four embedded designs right out of the box
• Design with no C or Assembly Code, PSoC Express’ based design platform
• Powered by PSoC Mixed-Signal Arrays
• Compact USB thumb drive format
• 16-pin connection interface to plug the malfunction expansion card into target boards
• Pins accessible for user functions
• I2C and ISSP support

Geoff Charubin, Cypress, said:

The FirstTouch Kit is a convenient, inexpensive vehicle for designers to experience the flexibility of the PSoC family, both in terms of our mixed-signal programmability and through the plethora of embedded designs…

…We encourage designers of embedded systems, no matter what their level of experience, to visit our website and try the FirstTouch Kit.

The PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit includes two small boards — a main system board that interfaces with a computer over USB, and a detachable multifunction expansion card. The expansion card includes inputs and outputs for the many applications supported by the kit. No other thumbdrive kit offers such an extensive array of applications.

The PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit is available today from the Online Store on the Cypress website and from Cypress's distribution partners worldwide. The kit is priced at US$29.95.

Cypress PSoC (Programmable System-on-Chip)

PSoC (Programmable System-on-Chip) is a software configured, mixed-signal array with a built-in microcontroller core. The core is a Cypress proprietary, 8-bit Harvard architecture design called the M8C. PSoC has three separate memory spaces: paged SRAM for data, Flash memory for instructions and fixed data, and I/O Registers for controlling and accessing the configurable logic blocks and functions.

PSoC devices employ a highly configurable system-on-chip architecture for embedded control design, offering a flash-based equivalent of a field-programmable ASIC without lead-time or NRE penalties. PSoC devices integrate configurable analog and digital circuits, controlled by an on-chip microcontroller, providing both enhanced design revision capability and component count savings. They include up to 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, 2 Kbytes of SRAM, an 8×8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, and hardware I2C communications.

The flexible PSoC resources allow designers to future-proof their products by enabling firmware-based changes during design, validation, production, and in the field. The unique PSoC flexibility shortens design cycle time and allows for late-breaking feature enhancements. All PSoC devices are also dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to morph internal resources on-the-fly, utilizing fewer components to perform a given task.

Easy to use development tools enable designers to select configurable library elements for analog functions such as amplifiers, ADCs, DACs, filters and comparators and digital functions such as timers, counters, PWMs, SPI and UARTs. The PSoC family's analog features include rail-to-rail inputs, programmable gain amplifiers and up to 14-bit ADCs with exceptionally low noise, input leakage and voltage offset.

A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions saving customers design time, board space and power consumption while improving system quality. Customers can save as much as $10 in system costs.

More info: Cypress PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit