New micro controller ‘faster and more powerful’

The VM2 is smaller, measuring 52 x 48mm and, according to Micro-Robotics, is more powerful and 15 times faster than its predecessor. The controller is said to have very low power consumption will be produced for the foreseeable future to support existing customers and applications. Designed for a range of applications, custom boards can also be provided to optimise the performance of specific applications. The VM2 can handle analogue and digital I/O, graphical user interfaces, Flash, RAM and external memory card filing systems and TCP/IP Internet protocols. It uses a new controller in the STM32 family of ARM based 32-bit flash microcontrollers running at 72MHz. The board also has an 8MB Flash containing user application code and Flash filing system, a 1MB sram (backed up by optional battery), 512KB fast flash containing the Venom2 operating system and 64KB fast sram.. Micro-Robotics says that during continuous operation the VM2 consumes 45mA at 3.3V and in 'idle' mode the current consumption of the standard board is 19mA. For applications where fast clock speed is not important this can be traded off against improved current consumption when the idling current can be adjusted to 6mA. VM2 also has a 'sleep' mode in which it will consume micro amps. A copy of Venom2, the latest version of the Venom embedded control language is supplied with each VM2 control board.