The automotive market is changing quickly, transitioning from familiar technologies such as ordinary bulbs, mechanical systems, and hydraulics to lightweight, intelligent replacements such as LEDs and brushless motors, amid the general trend toward electrification and digitalization. New vehicles can contain over 100 ECUs and, as their complexity is always increasing, design teams need to accelerate development to keep pace.

ST’s AutoDevKit ecosystem introduces a new and efficient toolset for creating working prototypes, replacing traditional artisan approaches and supporting standardization and design reuse. Available for free, the AutoDevKit library is a software environment that lets users select the microcontrollers and functional boards from ST’s wide automotive portfolio to easily prototype an automotive solution.

After choosing the preferred AutoDevKit components, users are guided to connect the boards, generate code, compile and download firmware, without forgetting prototype testing and debugging. A fundamental aspect of the AutoDevKit ecosystem is to offer easy-to-use application-program interfaces (API) for communication and control for each of the functional boards supported.

“Automotive-electronics designers are under intense time-to-market pressure and delivering a credible proof of concept quickly is critical,” said Marco Monti, President, Automotive and Discrete Group, STMicroelectronics. “Our AutoDevKit ecosystem can cut months of engineering effort from traditional prototype development by letting users concentrate on system functionality and offload low-level tasks such as building device drivers.”

The AutoDevKit software is part of the integrated design environment for ST’s SPC5 automotive microcontrollers.