MIKROE has hit a major milestone in its modular hardware journey, rolling out its 2000th Click board with the launch of RTC 27 Click, a low power real time clock and calendar module aimed at always on, battery powered designs.
The Click ecosystem is built around the mikroBUS™ standard, an idea CEO and founder Neb Matic first explored 15 years ago with a simple question what is the smallest pin count that can still support the broadest range of peripherals.
His answer 16 pins, arranged in two rows of eight. That pinout proved flexible enough to accommodate most chips, modules and components designers might want on an add on board, and it became the basis for a platform on which MIKROE now introduces nearly one new Click every day.
RTC 27 Click joins this family as a compact add on board for fast proof of concept and prototyping in embedded projects. It is built around NXP’s PCF8525, a nano power CMOS real time clock and calendar with an I2C interface.
The device tracks year, month, date, weekday, hours, minutes, seconds and even 1/100 second data, and supports selectable crystal temperature compensation with aging offset to keep time more accurate over the long term.
It also integrates programmable alarm and watchdog timers, timestamp capture, battery backup with automatic switchover, and two configurable interrupt outputs that can be routed via onboard jumpers.
Power consumption is one of its headline features. In timekeeping mode at 3.3 VDD, the RTC typically draws just 64 nA, making it well suited to portable instruments, wearables, industrial systems and IoT nodes that need reliable timekeeping without draining the battery.
Beyond the core silicon, the board also incorporates ClickID, allowing the host system to automatically identify the board and simplify setup.
As with other Click boards, RTC 27 Click can plug into any host that supports the mikroBUS standard and is supported by mikroSDK open source libraries, giving developers a ready made software layer for evaluation and customization.
Leadership Comment
Comments Aleksandar Mitrovic – Click boards Product Marketing Manager at MIKROE: “This large product range enables embedded designers to address a huge number of applications quickly and simply. This design approach is easy to access and cost-effective when compared to the price of bespoke design tools that are limited to products from one company. Designers can get up and running within minutes, without having to constantly learn new tools.”
Partners Comment
Adds Alejandro Kelly, Smart Analog Interfaces (SAI) Technical Marketing Manager at NXP: “Our strategic partnership with MIKROE has ensured that many of our latest MCUs and ICs are now supported in MIKROE’s NECTO Studio IDE through the Click board™ program, which saves design time and cost by standardizing development tools, and ensures we can reach more people. Featuring the PCF8525 RTC IC, the RTC 27 Click provides highly accurate timekeeping to solve real-world challenges quickly and efficiently.”
