XEMICS Shows off Home Automation Microcontroller

Home automation is said to be the wave of the future, but initially, we're more likely to see it in new homes. The cost of retrofitting the old homestead is extremely prohibitive unless the folks pushing wireless and "no new wires" approaches can get competitive products to market. XEMICS is one of the companies working on short-range wireless connectivity products, and yesterday the company told us about the XE88LC08 home automation microcontroller. The XE88LC08 includes an eight-channel 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), along with 11kBytes of MTP Flash memory, 520 Bytes of RAM, counters, UART, IO functions, and PWM (pulse-width modulation). This programmable System-On-Chip operates from 2.4 V to 5.5 V and uses less than 2 uA in low-speed mode and 300 uA/MHz in active mode. Asynchronous digital communication can be made via the integrated 115 kbaud UART or by connecting the XE88LC08 to a XEMICS XE1200 ultra low-power radio transceiver. The ADC itself requires only 200 uA for a 12-bit 8 kHz or an 8-bit 20 kHz data conversion. The RISC MCU executes instructions in a single clock cycle, including multiplication, conditional jump, or multiple position shift. XEMICS says the device can be used for temperature monitoring, intrusion detection, remote metering, air quality monitoring, and any application that relies on batteries. The XE88LC08 is available now and is priced at $3.64 in 1,000-unit quantities.