Microchip Targets Students and Hobbyists with Its New, $30 MPLAB PICkit Basic Debugger
Fully CMSIS-DAP compatible, this new low-cost debugger is part of the company's push to make its products more accessible.
Microchip has announced the launch of a new, more affordable CMSIS-DAP debugging tool — as part of a push to make its products and technologies more appealing to students, hobbyists, and makers: the MPLAB PICkit Basic debugger.
"As part of an ongoing strategy to make Microchip solutions easier to work with and more accessible, the MPLAB PICkit Basic debugger was designed to be a versatile and cost-effective solution for the development community," says Microchip's Rodger Richey of the launch. "Compatibility with a wide range of microcontrollers and robust debugging capabilities make it an essential tool for hobbyists and professional engineers looking to optimize their development workflows."
While designed primarily with Microchip's own microcontrollers and microprocessors in mind — its AVR, PIC, dsPIC, and SAM families — the new debugger is a fully-functional CMSIS-DAP-standard debugger. That means support in a wide variety of development environments and debugging tools, alongside Microchip's own MPLAB X IDE, MPLAB IPE, and its MPLAB Visual Studio Code extensions.
The debugger includes a USB 2.0 Type-C connection, good for up to 480Mb/s data transfer rates, and includes an eight-pin single in-line header with bundled flying leads for linking to devices on test over to four-wire JTAG, Serial Wire Debug (SWD), UPDI, PDI, SPI, debugWIRE, and TPI debug and programming connections, plus backwards compatibility with two-wire JTAG and ICSP programming — while a bundled adapter converts the eight-pin inline connector to a 10-pin Arm SWD standard pinout.
The biggest selling point of the debugger, though, is undoubtedly its price: Microchip is launching the device at just $29.99, including the debugger, a USB Type-C cable, a color-coded flying-lead set for the pins, the 10-pin SWD adapter and flat cable, and two stickers. The device is supported on Microsoft Windows 10 or later, Apple macOS, and Linux, and can be used in MPLAB X IDE version 6.25 or later.
More information on the MPLAB PICkit Basic debugger is available on the Microchip website.