Digilent 410-302P-KIT - Manual

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ChipKIT™WiFire™ Board Reference Manual
May 12, 2014
This manual applies to Rev B of the board.
Pre-Production Limited Quantity Release
The first manufacturing build of the chipKIT WiFire board was produced using the PIC32MZ2048ECG100 – A4
engineering silicon provided by Microchip®. The use of engineering silicon enables early adopters to get a head
start on their designs. The engineering silicon was only available in limited quantities, thus limiting the initial
number of chipKIT WiFire boards built. The functionality of the engineering silicon on the chipKIT WiFire board will
be substantially the same as production silicon for the vast majority of designs. Most projects built on a pre-
production chipKIT WiFire board will work without modification on a production board. However, as with any
engineering silicon, there is the potential for some minor variation. For more detailed information on the behavior
of the engineering silicon used on the board, please refer to the errata that can be downloaded from
www.digilentinc.com/wifire or to get the most up to date errata from
http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?product=PIC32MZ2048ECH144#documentation .
Overview
The chipKIT WiFire is based on the popular Arduino™ open-source hardware prototyping platform and adds the
performance of the Microchip PIC32MZ microcontroller. The WiFire has a WiFi MRF24 and SD card on the board,
both with dedicated SPI signals. The WiFire board takes advantage of the powerful PIC32MZ2048ECG
microcontroller. This microcontroller features a 32-bit MIPS processor core running at 200 MHz, 2MB of flash
program memory, and 512K of SRAM data memory. The WiFire can be programmed using the Multi-Platform
Integrated Development Environment (MPIDE), an environment based on the original Arduino IDE, modified to
support PIC32. It contains everything needed to start developing embedded applications. The WiFire features a
USB serial port interface for connection to the MPIDE and can be powered via USB or by an external power supply.
In addition, the WiFire is fully compatible with the advanced Microchip MPLAB®X IDE and works with all MPLAB X
compatible in-system programmer/debuggers, such as the Microchip PICkit™3 or the Digilent® chipKIT PGM. The
WiFire is easy to use and suitable for both beginners and advanced users experimenting with electronics and
embedded control systems.
Note: The Microchip PIC32MZ processor is a new generation microcontroller incorporating a very complex,
aggressively ambitious analog to digital converter (ADC) design. The ADC uses a high speed pipelined architecture
that does not lend itself well to multichannel applications or low speed sampling applications. As a result, the ADC
does not meet Microchip’s original design specification. Consequently, the ADC performance is not as good as on
the previous Microchip PIC32MX processors. For detailed information on the PIC32MZ ADC performance and
limitations, please refer to the errata that can be downloaded from
www.digilentinc.com/wifire or get the most up
to date errata from
http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?product=PIC32MZ2048ECH144#documentation .
DOC#: 502-273 Copyright Digilent, Inc. All rights reserved.
Other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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