With the cost of materials and labor rising,
wouldn’t it be nice to find out
the amount of pavement needed
for a new road has been
minimized? Microchip has
taken that concept and applied
it to its latest line of EEPROM
devices. The company’s UNI/O
family only requires a single trace be paved from the microcontroller EEPROM—and even a fresh engineering
graduate could be trusted to handle
the routing of a single trace (Fig. 1). The lone I/O combines both the clock and
data into a single bit stream using the
Manchester encoding technique.
The six devices in the family can
handle data rates from 10 to 100 kHz
and provide 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 kbits of
data storage (128 to 2048 by 8). Best of
all, each device is available in a three-pin
SOT-23 package. Yet even with only
three legs, they can kick some circuit
butt, with features such as status registoring devices, printer cartridge sensors, rechargeable battery
sensors, and portable data loggers.
The devices support 1.8/2.5-V to 5.5-V operating voltage
ranges. In addition to the SOT-23, versions are available in
eight-pin PDIP, MSOP, SOIC, and TDFN formats. Pricing
ranges between $0.22 and $0.31 in 10,000-unit quantities. And
so you can get your feet wet right away, UNI/O devices are
included with Microchip’s MPLAB serial memory kit, which
includes a device programmer and drivers for various MCUs
for less than $80 (Fig. 2).
MICROCHIP • www.microchip.com/unio
