Date: 31st May 2011

Freescale's ZigBee supporting MCUs MC1323x is now available in production volumes

Freescale Semiconductor's MC1323x family optimized for consumer applications using ZigBee RF4CE technology is now available in production quantities. A MC1323x development kit with integrated Synaptics TouchPad technology is also available to help accelerate design cycles and ease the migration from infrared (IR) to radio frequency (RF) technology.

Freescale says the ultra-low-power MC13233C device was designed for the consumer electronics market and is also well suited to meet the needs of price-sensitive residential, commercial, industrial and medical applications that require high performance. The MC13233C includes all of the functionality needed for RF remote controls, keyboards, touchpads, mice, 3D glasses and many other applications outside of the consumer market, such as the residential, industrial and medical markets claims Freescale.

Freescale is collaborating with Synaptics, to create a custom touchpad solution integrated into the development hardware. The MC1323x development kit allows customers to quickly prototype pointing solutions that are becoming popular in advanced remote controls.

"Freescale's MC13233C SoC will help accelerate the adoption of RF-based remote control devices," said Bruno Baylac, director of Freescale's Metering, Medical & Connectivity MCU business. "By working with Synaptics, we're also able to offer a development kit that integrates Synaptics' leading touchpad technology to make it easier and faster for customers to design better performing, more efficient and less expensive products."

"The vision of a single remote control controlling multiple devices in the home is becoming a reality," said Ted Theocheung, vice president of Synaptics' PC and Digital Home Solutions. "Synaptics, a leading supplier in touchpad technology, is excited to participate by enabling a custom touchpad solution that supports RF4CE and the new HID standards for direct access pointing and gesturing. With the MC1323x development kits, customers can quickly prototype pointing solutions that are popular in today's advanced remote controls and enhanced consumer electronics user interfaces such as set-top boxes, TV and other digital media devices."

The features and benefits of MC1323x family devices according to Freescale are:
1. It is cost optimized for RF-controlled consumer electronics and has RF4CE stack and development environment, along with this new cost-effective family of devices,
2. It will accelerate the migration from IR to RF based consumer electronics.
3. The MC1323x development kits with the integrated touchpad enable the design of mouse-like remote controls with touchpad interfaces. For consumers navigating the Internet via their televisions, these types of remotes will be more intuitive and allow for easier navigation than with traditional point-and-click remote controls.

Three devices are planned for the initial MC1323x family, with variations in memory size up to 128K flash and 8K RAM and the addition of a USB 2.0 peripheral. The MC13233C with 82K flash and 5K RAM is shipping now and the other two devices are targeted for sampling later this year.