PSoC 4 here I go :)

Hi Guys,

Last week I visited awesome campus of "Cypress Semiconductors India Private Limited". Beside some really amazing technologies they are working on, one of the most prominent, is the Cypress PSoC family.

They gave me few of their, Hobbyist friendly, Cheep PSoC based kits to try out. The list contained

CY8CKIT-042 PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit

CY8CKIT-040 PSoC 4000 Pioneer Development Kit With the Coloue selector Shield

PSoC 4 CY8CKIT-049 42xx Prototyping Kits

I will be doing short learning/project based tutorials on them and will explore/learn these kits while doing so :). 

These kits are like really awesome. How ? Well here are the highlights : 

1. The PSoC is a reconfigurable MCU. 

What that means is that suppose you are interfacing an Accelerometer sensor to the MCU, On arduino/etc boards, if you got one of the connections wrong ? Well you have to redo all the H/W connections, but with PSoC it's just a Software change :D :D and yes you are done no H/W rewiring required. This holds true for some breadboard interfacing where you have loads of connections and well you dont want to redo all of then :P ;). 

2. Really Low Cost !! 

 You can get one of the fully Programmable PSoC Prototyping kits for like 4$ ~= 250Rs Well that's practically FREE + You get a bonus USB to UART/I2C/SPI converter for FREE :D :D :D that's just Superb !! 

3. PSoC creator 

Believe me or not, PSoC creator is most fun to use IDE I have worked on so far. Common, which other IDE generates API's for you to use ? :P 

4. Programmable Programmer !! :D :D

Well we all know that Except Arduino and some other DEV Boards, all other Dev Boards has on board MCU that act as programmer/debugger. some have FTDI for that. But, have you ever heard of Programmable Programmer ?? in CY8CKIT-042(25$) and CY8CKIT-040(30$) the programming and debugging is done using PSoC5LP MCU, and trust me that is fully programmable !! So, if you want to do some LED ON/OFF for power enable or some thing else?? you can use the on board PSoC5LP header/GPIO's instead of using one of the Target MCU's .. This is Mind-blowing

5. Arduino R3 compatible header with Selectable 3.3v/5v Voltage levels . 

And the fun Goes on and On ... ... ...

In the coming few posts I will take on each of these kits and go into a bit more detail, but I will be finally focusing on The Cheapest available and Breadboard friendly  the PSoC4 CY8C-049-042xx Kit. and we will make some cool projects using that kit. 

Lastly, A teaser Pic :P :P ;)

 

You Guys can jump in and share any projects, which we will build using these platforms :) :D 

Thanks & Regards

please visit me at  technervers.com