Oak Micros announces the ZX-128e and ZX-1281e integrated microcontrollers that are similar to the ZX-24e/ZX-24ae devices. These new devices have a socket friendly 40-pin dual in line format that features 32 I/O pins, true voltage level RS232 transceiver, slide switch to choose between RS232 and logic voltage levels for serial channel one, and a 5 Volt regulator and power monitor LED. By utilizing the base features of the AVR microcontrollers, these new devices also offer a second hardware serial port, four additional PWM channels and access up to 63K bytes of RAM via an included daughter board.

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The new ZX-128e/ZX1281e are similar to the successful Oak Micros ZX-24e/ZX-24ae devices and have a socket-friendly 40-pin dual in line format that features 32 I/O pins, true voltage level RS232 transceiver, slide switch to choose between RS232 and logic voltage levels for serial channel one, LED monitoring on two I/O pins, and a 5 Volt regulator and power monitor LED. This is a very compact format that provides all of the associated circuitry to make the ZX-128e and ZX-1281e ready to use for prototyping on a breadboard or for production.

By utilizing the base features of the AVR microcontrollers, these new devices also offer a second hardware serial port and four additional PWM channels. Up to 60K bytes of ZBasic program code can be stored in the AVR flash memory, which as a side benefit provides read protection of user programs and is up to 45% faster than the previous devices that used SPI EEPROM. A RAM daughter board allows user programs to address over 63K of RAM for program variables, task stacks and heap storage. This is a substantial increase from the previous 3.5K bytes that was available for the ZX-24ae device and permits these new devices to be used in RAM intensive applications such as Web Servers and data collection/management engines. The single unit pricing of the ZX-128e is $69.95 and the ZX-1281e is $79.95. Volume pricing is available.

“These new ZBasic devices together with the ZX-1281 that we announced today provide a wide range of options and choices for customers” said Donald Kinzer, President of Elba Corporation. “Oak Micros is a strong partner and provides many useful ideas and help to improve and extend the ZBasic platform. A recent ZBasic application note on RS-485 networking, written by Oak Micros, utilizes the powerful multi-tasking capabilities of the ZBasic platform to support master-slave data transfers up to 460,800 baud.”

The ZX-128e and ZX-1281e are programmed using the ZBasic programming language which is a subset of Microsoft’s Visual Basic (VB6) language with extensions suitable for microcontroller programming. The compiler can detect common programming defects such as use of a variable before its initialization and other likely errors. The ZBasic compiler incorporates advanced optimization techniques that help programmers pack more functionality into the available code and data spaces by, for example, eliminating unused or superfluous variables and unreachable code.

Programs for the ZX-128e and ZX-1281ee may be edited and compiled using a state-of-the-art Integrated Development Environment. The ZBasic IDE, based on an open-source programmer’s editor, provides productivity enhancing features such as word completion, call tips, auto-indenting, syntax highlighting and undo/redo. The IDE can also be used to perform field updates of the ZX microcontroller’s internal firmware, making it simple for customers to upgrade to new releases as they become available. More information about Oak Micros' products and a free download of the compiler, IDE and documentation are available at http://oakmicros.com. The ZBasic website, owned by Elba Corporation, is http://www.zbasic.net.

ZBasic, ZX-24, ZX-24a, ZX-40, ZX-40a, ZX-44, ZX-44a, ZX-1281 are trademarks of Elba Corporation. The ZX-24e, ZX-24ae, ZX-128e, ZX-1281e product names have been licensed from Elba Corporation. Other product or service names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.