Texas Devices just lately launched a tiny microcontroller that’s making an enormous splash on the planet of electronics. In distinction to most product bulletins, it isn’t the chip’s processing energy that’s capturing a lot consideration, however quite its dimension. At simply in regards to the dimension of a flake of black pepper, the MSPM0C1104 is the smallest microcontroller ever to be produced.
Regardless of its small dimension, the workforce at Texas Devices has managed to suit an Arm Cortex-M0+ core into the brand new chip, together with 16KB of flash reminiscence and 1KB of SRAM. It additionally has loads of methods to combine with different gadgets, together with six GPIO pins, a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter with three channels, and UART, SPI, and I2C interfaces.
Look shut! (
: made by morten)
These are respectable specs for a microcontroller, however it’s the low-power design and 1.38 sq. millimeter footprint that makes each electronics engineer and {hardware} hacker wish to get their palms on one, stat. Even informal hobbyists can get in on the motion because the MSPM0C1104 prices just some dimes even in single-unit portions.
However armchair engineers that order one in all these chips may be in for a shock after they open the package deal. That 8-pin YCJ package deal is just not precisely breadboard-friendly, in spite of everything. Happily, as Morten of the made by morten YouTube channel demonstrated, with somewhat bit of labor and a few cheap instruments, it’s truly fairly straightforward to include an MSPM0C1104 into your personal circuits.
Morten designed a customized growth board for the chip in KiCad. It contains the microcontroller, energy provide, GPIO breakouts, and an I2C interface. The ultimate PCB design is a small, two-layer board measuring 30×30 mm.
Let the new plate do the onerous give you the results you want (: made by morten)
When parts are tiny, the scary half for many of us is the soldering work. How on the planet are you going to get these eight pads which are packed into 1.38 sq. millimeters soldered down within the right place? As Morten confirmed, there isn’t a have to sweat it — let a mini scorching plate do the heavy lifting for you. With a little bit of magnification and a few advantageous tweezers, you solely have to get the chip near the suitable spot. Then as soon as the new plate does its magic, the solder itself will pull the chip into place. Morten repeated this course of 5 instances, and the chip was aligned appropriately with good electrical connections in every case.
After getting the {hardware} all squared away, Morten fired up Code Composer Studio IDE to jot down a pair check packages. The primary, naturally, simply blinked an LED on and off. The opposite program powered a small thermostat that reads temperature and humidity measurements from a sensor and shows them on an alphanumeric show. A LaunchPad programmer was used to flash the firmware to the chip.
Make sure to take a look at the video for some suggestions and methods in order for you your personal growth board sporting the world’s smallest microcontroller — whether or not for a sensible objective or just for bragging rights. You can even learn up on all the pieces the MSPM0C1104 has to supply on the product info web page.
