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MPLAB® Harmony 3 is an extension of the MPLAB® ecosystem for creating embedded firmware solutions for Microchip 32-bit SAM and PIC microcontroller and microprocessor devices. Refer to the following links for more information.
Microchip 32-bit MCUs
Microchip 32-bit MPUs
Microchip MPLAB® X IDE
Microchip MPLAB® Harmony
Microchip MPLAB® Harmony Pages
This topic provides a brief overview of reference applications built on Microchip’s 32-bit SAM and PIC MCUs using the MPLAB Harmony 3 software framework.
This distribution package contains a variety of reference application projects that demonstrate the capabilities of Microchip’s 32-bit SAM and PIC MCUs using the MPLAB Harmony 3 software framework.
The reference_apps repository contains applications that are built on Microchip 32-bit SAM and PIC development boards/kits. The development boards/kits provide support to exercise the features of MCU through additional hardware like displays, communication buses, transceivers, sensors, external memories, etc. The additional features are exercised either through hardware available on the MCU development boards/kits or are available as plugins through interface headers like mikroBUS Click or Xplained Pro extensions.
The reference_apps repository contains the following types of applications.
- Large feature-rich applications involving the integration of several technologies like Audio, USB, TCP/IP, Wireless, Security, Low Power, RTOS, etc
- Applications demonstrating capabilities of Microchip’s 32-bit SAM and PIC MCUs development boards/kits (Curiosity, Nano, etc.) which allows extending hardware capability through mikroBUS Click or Xplained Pro extensions.
For example, the application “Fitness Tracker” is built to target the health care industry and wearable products. It is built on the low form factor and low footprint SAM D21 Curiosity Nano development kit. The “Fitness Tracker” application reads the raw human heart rate data and processes it; it then displays in on a very low power consuming display. The heart rate sensor and the low power consuming display is interfaced to SAM D21 through mikroBUS click interfaces. - Applications demonstrating certain specific capabilities of the Microchip 32-bit SAM and PIC MCUs. For example Low Power application on SAM L21 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit demonstrating idle and standby modes
- Getting started applications pertaining to the Microchip's MCU products. These getting started applications demonstrates the usage of MPLAB Harmony 3 framework by exercising commonly used peripheral features.
Important!
The reference_apps repository is an alternative source of application examples. MPLAB Harmony 3 provides more product-specific examples pertaining to peripheral libraries (PLIB), drivers and middleware. Refer to the Harmony csp, core or technology-specific repositories on GitHub for more application examples.
Each application example is accompanied by documentation in the form of a readme file. The readme file is available in .md and .html format. The documentation describes the demo application functionality, hardware utilization, software or tools used and operation instructions under the following heads.
- Description
- Modules/Technology Used
- Hardware Used
- Software/Tools Used
- Setup
- Programming binary/hex file
- Programming/Debugging Application Project
- Running the Demo
- Comments
- Revision
As with all MPLAB Harmony 3 applications, each application is stand-alone in nature. The application project folder contains all the source/header files and libraries (if any) that is required to build and run it. The standalone projects are directory independent and can be placed in any directory of choice (except that the projects are not kept deep in the directory structure to avoid compiling errors due to long project path).
Although each application can run stand-alone from within its folder using one of the 2 methods of programming mentioned in the Instructions section above.
If an application is required to be enhanced, extended, or simply needs to use the MPLAB Harmony Configurator and generate the code freshly, the application requires the presence of other Harmony repositories.
In the documentation, the section "Software/Tools Used" mentions the MPLAB Harmony 3 repositories used to build this application.
In the documentation, the section "Comments" mentions the relevant reference documentation in the form of an application note or a detailed step by step training modules. This information helps in understanding and building the application from scratch and it also guides with steps to enhance or extend the existing application.
The applications are also provided with a pre-built hex/binary file. The user need not compile or build the application and can try it out on the hardware. This would be helpful to try out the application to get out of box experience.