Audio starter kit

Microchip has announced the MPLAB starter kit for dsPIC DSCs, which is supplied with development software and hardware including the USB-powered digital signal controller board with integrated debugger and programmer, the MPLAB IDE and MPLAB C30 C compiler software and sample programs and hardware for demonstrating speech and audio applications.

The board is populated with a 40 MIPS dsPIC33FJ256GP506 DSC, which has 256 KB of flash program memory and 16 KB of RAM, a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter and peripherals that support audio pulse-width modulation.

Additionally, the board has 4 Mb of serial flash memory to store audio messages and a 16-, 24-, 32-bit audio CODEC with sampling frequencies up to 58 kHz.

The demo board also includes a 100 mW headphone amp and microphone and line level inputs, along with a sample program for recording custom audio content.

This kit’s integrated debugger/programmer makes entering the world of digital audio simple.

Packaged with the company’s tools — the MPLAB IDE, MPLAB C30 student edition C compiler and hardware debugging and programming — the kit contains everything needed for dsPIC DSC code development.