Texas Instruments introduces Hercules™ LaunchPad, enabling designers to evaluate TI’s Hercules MCUs’ safety features for less than $20

Bangalore, July 25^th , 2013 — Today, Texas Instruments (TI) , welcomed the newest member to its popular microcontroller (MCU) LaunchPad ecosystem. At $19.99, the Hercules™ LaunchPad is the lowest cost evaluation platform for Hercules MCUs and provides an entry-level option enabling developers to gain familiarity with TI Hercules MCUs and evaluate the MCUs’ performance and safety features.

The TI Hercules LaunchPad is a modular, quick-launch evaluation kit that contains the development board, USB cable and documentation.  On-board emulation and included Hercules MCU demos allow exploration of advanced safety features integrated in Hercules MCUs.  The Hercules LaunchPad is available in two models – one based on the Hercules TMS570LS04x MCU and another based on Hercules RM42x MCU. Dual lockstep ARM® Cortex™-R4 based Hercules MCUs are intended for use in safety-critical automotive, industrial and medical applications needing to adhere to industry safety standards such as ISO 26262 and IEC 61508.

The TI MCU LaunchPad ecosystem, with its MSP430™ LaunchPad, C2000™ LaunchPad, Tiva™ C Series LaunchPad and now the new Hercules LaunchPad, offers flexibility and expandability through many available BoosterPack expansion boards.  These BoosterPacks enable greater functionality and speed design and exploration. Developers can get started quickly with TI’s free software, tools and documentation, as well as share project ideas and collaborate with best practices through a large community.

Features and benefits of the Hercules LaunchPad:

• Enables customers to evaluate Hercules MCUs designed for safety-critical applications related to functional safety standards, such as IEC 61508 and ISO 26262.
• Allows for expansion with a 40-pin BoosterPack header that brings out MCU pins for design flexibility.
• Provides footprint for an additional header to complete access to all MCU pins.
• Contains the development board with a features demo, USB cable and quick start guide to jumpstart evaluation directly out of the box.
• Powered by USB, the board integrates an on-board XDS100v2 JTAG emulator, LED lights, a light sensor and SCI to PC serial communication port for design flexibility.
• Includes software for evaluation, including Hercules MCU safety demos with downloadable host graphical user interface (GUI) to select and run the demos.
• Provides software drivers for demos using the Educational BoosterPack, an add-on module with an accelerometer, an LCD display, tri-color LEDs and other features to help users get familiar with the MCUs’ input/output (I/O) interfaces.
• Supports latest version of TI’s Eclipse-based Code Composer Studio™ integrated development environment (IDE) to ease development.
• Offers HALCoGen for download – GUI based code generation tool that allows developers to jump start their code development on Hercules MCU platform.

Availability and ordering

The TI Hercules TMS570LS04 MCU LaunchPad (LAUNCHXL-TMS57004) and Hercules RM42x MCU LaunchPad (LAUNCHXL-RM42) are available for $19.99 through the TI estore. Designers can also add to their growing TI MCU LaunchPad collection with the MSP430, C2000 and Tiva C Series LaunchPads and BoosterPacks, available at www.ti.com/herc-launchpad-pr-lp.  Once designers have familiarized themselves with Hercules MCUs using the Hercules LaunchPad, they can take designs to the next level with a variety of other Hercules MCU tools.

For more information:

• TI’s MCU LaunchPads and BoosterPacks: www.ti.com/herc-launchpad-pr-lp
• Hercules MCUs: www.ti.com/herc-launchpad-pr-lp3