By Microchip Technology 329
Microchip is adding an LCD controller to the popular AVR XMEGA microcontroller (MCU) family. The integration of an LCD controller reduces design complexity and lowers overall system cost, while providing ultra-low-power consumption for applications including utility metering, home automation, climate control, industrial control, sports equipment, toys, eTokens, medical equipment, power tools, fire alarm systems, and other systems that require a user interface.
The LCD controller in the AVR XMEGA B microcontrollers supports up to 4x40 segments on the 100-pin B1 devices and up to 4x25 segments on the 64-pin B3 devices. If you do not need all the LCD segments in your application, up to 16 of the LCD pins can be used as general purpose I/O (GPIO) pins.
The ultra-low-power LCD driver needs only 3 µA to run the LCD display and has several power-reducing features, such as built-in contrast control, ASCII character mapping, programmable segment blinking, SWAP mode, integrated LCD buffers, an integrated LCD power supply (independent from the supply voltage), and support for scrolling text. In addition to the integrated LCD controller, the AVR XMEGA B devices also feature a full-speed USB device with operation from an internal oscillator, dual 12-bit ADC, DMA controller, event system, picoPower® technology, and, of course, the AVR single-cycle CPU.