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Renesas Electronics Launches RL78/I1A DC/DC LED Control Demonstration Kit to Facilitate Digital LED Driver Design

27th February 2012

Renesas

ES Admin

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Renesas Electronics today announced its new DC/DC LED control demonstration kit based on the RL78/I1A microcontroller (MCU). The RL78/I1A MCU series of five application-specific standard products (ASSP) are designed for lighting applications. The RL78/I1A DC/DC LED control demonstration kit enables system designers to experience the benefits of MCU-based solutions for LED driver development. They can also learn about LED constant current control and various methods of dimming using the lighting-specific RL78/I1A MCUs.

An important feature of the kit is the new version of a very comprehensive and easy-to-use software GUI tool, called the Applilet EZ for HCD. The Applilet EZ for HCD enables very easy graphical configuration of an LED lighting system while also generating pre-compiled C code for the RL78/I1A MCUs. It enables system designers to program the target device using only a USB cable. Using the Applilet EZ for HCD software tool, they can generate communication protocol stacks for DALI and DMX512 in seconds.

The evaluation board included in the kit is based on the 38-pin R5F107DE device with 64KB of flash memory. It implements efficient circuits to demonstrate programmable 3-channel LED constant 350 milliampere (mA) current control in buck converter topology, using the 16-bit PWM timers running at 64 megahertz (MHz) and set to the dithering function to further improve the average resolution under a nanosecond. The board also provides a number of dedicated analogue peripherals integrated on chip, such as a programmable gain amplifier and comparators. The unique internal architecture of the devices reduces the code size and frees up the CPU to execute other instructions in the background.

Four types of dimming interfaces are supported by the board to demonstrate the flexibility of the solution. They comprise DALI, DMX512, IR remote control and analogue volume.

The RL78/I1A DC/DC LED control evaluation board supports an on-board debug function via the USB interface by using the IAR C-SPY debugger, eliminating the need for additional hardware. It allows flash programming and supports standard debug functions such as code execution, single stepping, software breakpoints and memory manipulation. In addition, the board also supports debugging using the E1 emulator. The board includes the IAR Embedded Workbench for the RL78 MCU with a code size limitation of 16KB as well as the IAR C-SPY debugger.

Pricing and Availability

Renesas' new demonstration board will be available from April 2012, priced at 249 Euros per unit. (Pricing and availability are subject to change without notice.)