New Industry Products

Atmel Introduces New Family Of AVR Microcontrollers For Industrial Motor Control

August 17, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Atmel Corp. announced a new family of AVR® microcontrollers targeted at the industrial control market. The ATmega16M1, ATmega32M1, and ATmega64M1 have been developed to serve the need for high accuracy pulse width modulation for advanced motor control applications with CAN and LIN connectivity. The new family of devices feature 16, 32, and 64 KB of Flash, general purpose IO pins, analog to digital converter, analog comparators, 8 and 16 bit timers and a Power Stage Controller. This feature set enables the microcontrollers to be a suitable fit for industrial control applications where CAN and LIN functionality is needed.

Based on the AVR 8-bit RISC architecture, the ATmega16M1, ATmega32M1, and ATmega64M1, integrate all of the basic peripherals necessary to satisfy the needs of complex motor control algorithms. According to Atmel, the devices offer a unique feature combination to safely and securely run any brushless dc motor via the appropriate driver and power elements with a minimum of external components. The integrated Power Stage Controller and analog functions generate a limited number of interrupts, reducing the code size and improving the real-time behavior of the applications.

The ATmega16M1, ATmega32M1, and ATmega64M1 are the first AVR microcontrollers offered in a 32-pin package while offering CAN and LIN support. As a result, these devices are well suited as distributed controllers in an industrial control network with a limited number of general purpose IO.

The ATmega32M1 is available now for both samples and orders. The ATmega16M1 and ATmega64M1 will be sampling in August and open for orders in September.

The ATmega32M1 has a suggested retail price of $1.95 in 10K units. The ATmega16M1 has a suggested retail price of $1.61 in 10K units. The ATmega64M1 has a suggested retail price of $2.44 in 10K units.