Energy Micro announced the availability of a new development kit for its EFM32 Gecko microcontroller family. Priced at $309, the kit includes full SEGGER J-Trace and J-Link support, reducing the need for additional debugging tools. The kit, named EFM32G-DK3550, is equipped with the ARM Cortex-M3 FM32G890F128 microcontroller. It is based on the main board from the bigger Leopard and Giant Gecko kits.

When using the EFM32G-DK3550, designers can directly access the Gecko MCU’s LCD and external bus interfaces. In addition the board offers a full complement of user interface hardware including a full color 320 x 240 resistive touch TFT display, supporting switches, a joystick and LEDs. The features include a replaceable prototyping area, 16MB NOR-Flash and 4MB PSRAM, Ethernet MAC/PHY, support for MicroSD, audio I/O and I2S DAC, as well as an on-board USB debug interface.

An on-board Advanced Energy Monitoring (AEM) system enables visualization of the prototype’s energy consumption. Supporting the EFM32G-DK3550 is Energy Micro’s Simplicity Studio suite, which includes the energyAware Profiler. Interfacing directly with the kit’s AEM system via USB, all relevant system data can be read out and presented on a host computer as real-time graphs of current consumption and the related object code.

Simplicity Studio further contains all relevant EFM32 Gecko code examples and application notes, and ensures that developers always have the latest available information from Energy Micro.