Microchip introduced 2 new development tools to its simple and easy-to-use graphics display portfolio for 16- and 32-bit PIC microcontrollers and dsPIC digital signal controllers. Rather than developing screens on the application itself, Microchip’s free Graphics Display Designer software tool allows the designer to visually create screens on a computer and then auto-generate the code that draws these screens for use with the free Microchip Graphics Library.

The Graphics PICtail Plus Daughter Board With 3.2″ Display Kit enables designers to cost-effectively evaluate Microchip’s graphics solutions and develop embedded graphics display applications.

With Microchip’s free graphics software and related development tools, designers can quickly integrate graphics display functions into embedded applications using a single microcontroller, reducing development risk, total system cost and time to market.

Key features of the free Graphics Display Designer Tool include:

• Configurable display size
• Enables multiple-screen displays/menus
• Object resizing, movement and placement
• Schemes, fonts and images resource management
• 16-bit color depth
• Plug-in for Microchip’s free MPLAB® IDE Integrated Development Environment
• Cross-platform compatibility among all of Microchip’s 16-bit PIC24 MCUs, 32-bit PIC32 MCUs and dsPIC digital signal controllers (DSCs)