December 16, 2014, Seoul — Infineon Technologies (Korea CEO Seung-soo Lee) has released two shields for RGB lighting and motor control for use by the Arduino design community.

These shields are compatible with the Arduino Uno R3 and can also be combined with the XMC1100 boot kit, which features 32-bit microcontrollers from the XMC1000 family. All XMC1000 products feature ARM® Cortex™-M0 processors. Infineon’s RGB LED lighting shield for Arduino features the XMC1202 microcontroller, which includes a built-in BCCU (Brightness Color Control Unit) for LED lighting control. The high-current DC motor control shield for Arduino features Infineon’s NovalithIC™ BTN8982TA, a highly integrated half-bridge driver for motor control.

Arduino is a computing platform that enables easy and rapid electronic prototype design using open-source hardware and software components.

Infineon's RGB LED lighting shield featuring XMC1202

Infineon's RGB LED lighting shield is an intelligent evaluation board for Arduino projects. This shield allows for rapid prototyping and cost-effective evaluation by enabling the application of different LED light engines. By providing three independent output channels, this RGB LED lighting shield enables flicker-free control of multicolor LEDs. The shield utilizes the XMC1202 microcontroller from the XMC1200 series. This series offers all the essential characteristics required for high-quality color control, including perfect dimming control, flicker-free control at all dimming levels, and low energy consumption. The BCCU automation hardware engine provides a high-quality LED lighting solution with excellent cost-effectiveness and flexibility. The BCCU is conveniently configurable and enables seamless dimming and color mixing. This shield can be expanded using a DMX interface for lighting and audio nodes or a 24GHz radar sensor for motion detection.

Infineon's DC motor control shield adopting BTN8982TA

The DC motor control shield for Arduino utilizes the BTN8982TA, enabling rapid and low-cost DC motor control prototype design and easy evaluation of half-bridge and full-bridge motor control applications. This motor control shield can drive two unidirectional DC motors or one bidirectional DC motor. It employs two NovalithIC BTN8982TAs as highly integrated, high-current half-bridge drivers suitable for motor driving applications. The NovalithIC BTN8982TA integrates two power chips (a p-channel high-side MOSFET and an n-channel low-side MOSFET) and a driver IC into a single package, and includes logic circuitry for power control and monitoring. Other features include diagnostics using current detection, slew rate control, dead time generation, and protection functions (overheating, undervoltage, overcurrent, and short circuits). Additionally, the NovalithIC BTN8982TA provides logic-level inputs, making it convenient to interface with microcontrollers.

The NovalithIC BTN8982TA provides a cost-optimized solution for use in protected high-current PWM motor drives while occupying very little board space. This DC motor control shield can handle high-frequency PWM up to 30kHz. In addition, this shield supports brushed DC motor control up to a continuous load of up to 250W (e.g., 12V/20A), and the BTN8982TA is capable of a peak current of up to 55A with current limits applied.

supply

The RGB lighting shield for Arduino featuring the XMC1202 and the DC motor control shield for Arduino featuring the BTN8982TA are available for purchase at Farnell element14 and Newark element14 until the end of January 2015, and thereafter they will also be available through Infineon's distributors.

Additional information

More details regarding XMC microcontrollers related to Infineon's new Arduino products can be found at the following site:

www.infineon.com/arduino
www.infineon.com/xmc
www.infineon.com/xmc-dev