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……
