Actel introduces IGLOO-based portable control solutions

Further expanding its offerings for the portable market based on the industry’s lowest power field-programmable gate array (FPGA), Actel Corporation announced two plug-in daughter cards developed to manage human machine interface (HMI) and miniature motor control functionality. The new HMI Daughter Card and the Motor Control Daughter Card are offered as plug-ins to Actel’s popular IGLOO Icicle Kit. Combined with the company’s previously announced IGLOO-based storage and display-related development boards, design examples and intellectual property (IP) cores, the company believes these new control-related solutions will increase market penetration for Actel’s 5 microwatt (µW) IGLOO FPGAs in the rapidly growing portable market.

Small Footprint Daughter Boards Speed Control Design with Turnkey Solutions
As keypads, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for backlight and display, and motors have grown commonplace, portable designers have typically relied on microcontrollers, application-specific standard products (ASSPs) or complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs) to handle HMI and miniature motor control functions. However, microcontrollers and ASSPs do not provide adequate flexibility and CPLDs do not offer the levels of integration or sophistication of FPGAs.

Co-developed with partners Ishnatek, a design services company, and Avnet Memec, a division of Avnet, the new HMI and miniature motor control solutions provide a platform-based design approach, enabling designers to quickly and easily address changing requirements, implement custom algorithms, and make design changes through device reprogramming.

The HMI Daughter Card demonstrates keypad control, brightness control for white LEDs, color mixing for red, green blue (RGB) LEDs and tone generation, which is beneficial for applications like smart phones, portable gaming consoles and remote control devices. The Motor Control Daughter Card demonstrates brushless DC and stepper motor control and can support a variety of functions often found in portable medical, industrial and consumer applications, such as respirators, infusion and volumetric pumps, smart phones and security cameras.

An attractive low-power platform for portable design, the feature-rich 5µW IGLOO FPGAs can absorb additional glue logic and multiple functions — from storage and display to control — into a single chip, thereby reducing bill of materials, board area, power consumption and cost. And, with IGLOO’s power-saving Flash*Freeze function, one of several power modes the IGLOO family offers to optimize power consumption, designers can tap the lowest power solution for HMI and miniature motor control applications — up to 1700 times lower than competing programmable solutions.

Actel