Atmel Launches AVR Xplained Kits to Accelerate System Development Times for MCU Applications

Supporting all Atmel AVR devices including the megaAVR®, AVR XMEGA® and AVR UC3 families, the new Xplained kits create a great platform for developers to easily evaluate Atmel AVR devices early in the design cycle. A range of extension boards are also being released as accessory devices to offer customers the ability to easily evaluate a combination of microcontroller (MCU) and accessory devices before making big investments. The extension boards include the Sensors Xplained series, CryptoAuthentication(TM) Xplained and Temperature Sensors Xplained. The sensor Xplained series features partnerships with best-in-class suppliers of accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and pressure sensors with supporting driver software to enable a seamless implementation.

The new Atmel Xplained kits allow customers to quickly evaluate a wide range of Atmel's MCUs and development tools and solutions. The kits offer the customers a hardware platform to easily benchmark Atmel AVR microcontrollers and other Atmel devices without having to build their own hardware, which can significantly reduce customer time-to-market.

Atmel is committed to providing our customers with complete microcontroller solutions, said Ingar Fredriksen, sr. director, AVR product marketing, Atmel Corporation. The launch of the new AVR Xplained kits is another step towards providing a complete microcontroller toolchain to our customers and the application specific add-on boards greatly simplify system integration of these optimized peripheral devices. The Xplained MCU kits and add-on boards seamlessly connect to the development environment in AVR Studio with software libraries and a wide range of code examples.

The AVR Xplained kits feature the respective Atmel microcontroller with a rich selection of external circuitry including Atmel QTouch® slider and buttons, LEDS, analog light and temperature sensors, USB port and four expansion headers. These features provide easy access to analog and digital I/O and accommodate the various add-on boards.