Energy Micro’s low power MCU delivers long battery life

The folks at Energy Micro, who cheerfully bill themselves as "The energy friendly microcontroller and radio company," have announced that the guys and gals at VELUX have selected the EFM32 Giant Gecko microcontroller for their latest electric window remote control.

The handheld ‘VELUX Integra’ programmable remote has an easy-to-use touch screen interface for controlling windows, ventilation flaps, blinds, and other accessories. The EFM32 32-bit MCU with 1024KB of Flash memory incorporates an autonomous low power direct drive TFT controller for the large color display, which features a smartphone-like interface with on-screen icons and ‘touch’ and ‘swipe’ functions. The LESENSE function block in the EFM32 enables autonomous monitoring of external sensors while the microcontroller is in sub-microamp Deep Sleep mode. In the VELUX Integra control it is used to wake up the device from sleep when someone touches it. The EFM32 also implements the io-homecontrol two-way wireless communications protocol.


Bjarne Ravndal Andreasen, R&D manager at VELUX, commented, “People have become very familiar with smartphone-style interfaces that use graphic icons and touch screens. In the Integra remote control we’ve used the EFM32 microcontroller to be able to produce a very easy-to-use, attractive remote control that offers great flexibility and longevity.”


Energy Micro’s CEO, Geir Førre, added, “The combination of high performance and very low power consumption can only be obtained using an architecture based upon autonomous operation of an MCU’s peripheral functions. This makes the EFM32 microcontrollers ideal for applications like the VELUX Integra where sophisticated functionality is complemented by extremely low energy consumption to satisfy the end user’s requirements.”

Devices in the 32-bit Giant Gecko (GG) family are the world's most energy-friendly microcontrollers. They provide Flash memory configurations up to 1024KB with the added option of embedded USB connectivity, direct drive TFT, EBI and CPU speeds up to 48 MHz. All Giant MCUs include the autonomous low energy peripherals found in the Gecko family, like AES encryption, pulse counter, low energy UARTs and LESENSE sensor interface, and on-chip operational amplifiers. Package options include QFN64, QFP100, BGA112 and BGA120.

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