Silicon temperature sensors offer an easy-to-use alter- native to traditional temperature sensors, such as ther- mocouple, thermistors and RTDs. The TC77 SPI™ Thermal Silicon Sensor is especially suited for embed- ded systems, due to its SPI interface. This serves to provide a straight-forward and easy way to interface to a microcontroller. This application note will discuss system integration, firmware implementation and PCB layout techniques for the TC77 in an embedded system. Microchip has developed a hardware platform called the PICkit™ 1 FLASH Starter Kit, allowing the designer to quickly begin their system development. Addition- ally, Microchip has developed a TC77 PICtail™ Daugh- ter Board that interfaces directly to the PICkit 1 FLASH Starter Kit. These two boards are used to demonstrate the techniques for integrating the TC77 into an embed- ded systems environment. Both of these development boards are available on the Microchip web site at www.microchip.com.M AN913 Interfacing the TC77 Thermal Sensor to a PICmicro Microcontroller The TC77 SPI Thermal Sensor PICtail daughter Author: Steve Bible and Jim Lepkowski Microchip Technology Inc. board is designed to demonstrate the ease of integrating a digital silicon IC temperature sensor to a PICmicro microcontroller unit (MCU). The TC77 INTRODUCTION PICtail daughter bo……