Mikroelektronika

MikroElektronika

Native name	Микроелектроника
Type	Ltd.
Industry	Electronics
Founded	Belgrade, Serbia (January 9, 2009 (2009-01-09)) First founded 1997
Headquarters	Belgrade, Serbia
Key people	Nebojša Matić (Owner and General Manager)
Products	Microcontroller Development Systems, Accessory Boards, Compilers, Books
Number of employees	~100[1]
Website	www.mikroe.com

MikroElektronika (sometimes known by its abbreviation MikroE) is a producer and retailer of hardware and software tools for developing embedded systems. The company headquarters are in Belgrade, Serbia. Its best known software products are mikroC, mikroBasic and mikroPascal compilers for programming microcontrollers. Its flagship hardware product line is click boards™, a range of more than 250 add-on boards for interfacing microcontrollers with peripheral sensors or transceivers. These boards conform to mikroBUS™ – a standard^[2] conceived by MikroElektronika and later endorsed by NXP Semiconductors^[3] and Microchip Technology,^[4] among others. MikroElektronika is also known for Hexiwear, an Internet of Things development kit developed in partnership with NXP Semiconductors.^[5]

History

Serbian entrepreneur — and current company owner and CEO — Nebojsa Matic started publishing an electronics magazine called "MikroElektronika" in 1997.^[6] In 2001, the magazine was shut down and MikroElektronika repositioned itself as a company focused on producing development boards for microcontrollers and publishing books for developing embedded systems.

The company started offering compilers in 2004, with the release of mikroPascal for PIC and mikroBasic for PIC — compilers for programming 8-bit microcontrollers from Microchip Technology. Between 2004 and 2015 the company released C, Basic and Pascal compilers for seven microcontroller architectures: PIC, PIC32, dsPIC/PIC24, FT90x, AVR, 8051, and ARM® (supporting STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Mircochip-based ARM® Cortex microcontrollers).

In conjunction with compilers, MikroElektronika kept its focus on producing development boards while gradually ceasing its publishing activities. Its current generation of the "Easy" boards brand was released in 2012. One of the flagship models, EasyPIC Fusion v7 was nominated for best tool at the Embedded World 2013 exhibition in Nurembeg,^[7] an important embedded systems industry gathering. Other product lines were introduced as well, including the "mikroProg" line of hardware programmers and debuggers, and the range of sensor and transceiver add-on boards known as click boards™.

During this time span the company developed relationships with various semiconductor vendors and distributors. It became an official partner of Microchip Technology, NXP Semiconductors, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Imagination Technologies, Telit, Quectel, and U-blox.^[8] MikroElektronika also built up its worldwide distributor network by partnering with Digi-Key, Mouser Electronics, Future Electronics, RS Components as well as more than 50 local distributors in all continents.^[9]

Responding to rising public interest in the Internet of things, in 2016 MikroElektronika released Hexiwear, a wearable development kit created in partnership with NXP Semiconductors. Hexiwear was funded through Kickstarter.^[10] Since its release on the market, it won four industry awards: Best in Show, Reader's choice, and Best IoT product at ARM TechCon 2016 Innovation Challenge,^[11] 2016 ECN Impact award,^[12] as well as Best for Rapid prototyping at the Hackster Maker Madness competition.^[13]

Product lines

MikroElektronika's catalog comprises more than 500 products. The following table lists its main product lines.

EasyPIC v7 Development Board is the company's leading brand

Mikromedia Boards are suitable for development of multimedia and graphics applications

MikroProg programmer and In-Circuit Debugger supports over 570 Microchip PIC, dsPIC30/33 and PIC32 microcontrollers

Social responsibility

Mikroelektronika actively participates in helping colleges, universities, as well as high-school students and projects. In 2009 it donated a set of training kits for microcontroller programming to the Faculty of Computer Science in Belgrade.^[14] Company was the official partner of the Exporter Of The Year 2009 event,^[15] organized by Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency.

Community

Mikroelektronika is popular in the microcontroller community. There are blogs, forums and social groups dedicated to Mikroelektronika's products.

• Microchip Technology's Marketing Manager Lucio Di Jasio has dedicated a page to Mikroelektronika's Multimedia Board For PIC32MX4 in his PIC32 Pilot's Logbook, and has written examples accompanied with video presentations.^[16]
• Embedded Lab is a community blog with many projects built with MikroElektronika compilers
• Roman Black's personal website contains a lot of projects with MikroElektronika tools.
• Micro-examples is a community website containing examples for Mikroelektronika's compilers and development boards.
• PIC32 Compilers is a community website created by MikroElektronika.
• Libstock is a community website created by MikroElektronika for sharing and downloading code, such as libraries and projects, written in mikroElektronika and other compilers.
• Several third-party books on microcontroller projects have demonstration examples written in Mikroelektronika's compilers.^[16][17][18]

^{[19] [20][21][20]}

References

External links

• MikroElektronika Homepage
• Visual TFT Software
• Visual GLCD Software
• Libstock Website