Atmel has recently announced the addition of the SAM L22 series to its family of secure, ARM® Cortex® M0+-based MCUs. These new devices offer a built-in, ultra-low power capacitive touch interface with a segment LCD controller that can deliver up to 320 segments. Typical applications for these controllers would include low-power devices such as thermostats, electric/gas/water meters, home control, medical and access systems.

Their inbuilt features make them suited to IoT applications and the SAM L22 series includes security capabilities to deliver 256-bit AES, cyclic redundancy check (CRC), true random number generator, Flash protection and tamper detection to ensure information is securely stored, delivered and accessible. The devices use Atmel’s proprietary picoPower® technologies for low power consumption and smart low-power peripherals that work independently of the CPU in sleep modes.

"As more devices in the consumer, industrial and home automation segments are becoming smarter and connected, these devices require a number of unique features including ultra-low power, security, touch capability with an LCD—all features that are currently provided in the SAM L22," said Oyvind Strom, Sr. Director of MCUs, Atmel Corporation. "Atmel is already engaged with a number of alpha customers developing metering, thermostat and industrial automation solutions based on the new Atmel SMART SAM L22 series."

The SAM L22 series also provides up to 256kB of Flash and 32KB of SRAM, crystal less USB device, programmable Serial Communication modules (SERCOM) and Atmel’s patented Event System and Sleepwalking™ technologies. The SAM L22 Atmel Xplained Pro evaluation board is also available to help fast track system design and development. The Atmel SAM L22 series is sampling now with production release due in December 2015.