The MPLAB Code Configurator is a free user friendly plug-in tool for the MPLAB® X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that leverages drivers and GUI for controlling and driving the peripherals inside PIC microcontrollers with simple and clearly documented driver APIs.

The configurator tool simplifies software development, using an intuitive GUI to configure peripherals, accelerating time to market for customers designing with 8- and 16-bit PIC microcontrollers. It is easy to change peripheral configurations or add/remove peripherals from your project. Also, the generated code is reliable and designed for efficient use of CPU and memory resources.

The tool offers many powerful features such as visual setup for I/O pin management with both a chip-level and tabular view. Also, once a system-level clock rate is set, the tool will automatically calculate timer periods, duty cycles and baud rates for peripherals.

With a simple drag-and-drop style interface, this tool generates easy-to-read code that includes peripheral configuration setup, drivers and pin mapping to efficiently solve application development obstacles. Designers can benefit from this easy-to-use code development solution, which is better able to meet their ever-shorter product design schedules and decreasing budgets.

“The MPLAB Code Configurator not only simplifies the development effort, but also reduces time to market,” said Joe Thomsen, vice president of Microchip’s MCU16 Division.

“This tool, which now includes support for PIC24 families, provides a simple graphical interface to setup the device peripherals and pins, giving users a head start in their application code development.”