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With the cost of materials and labor rising, wouldn’t it be nice to find out the amount of pavement needed for a new road has been minimized? Microchip has taken that concept and applied it to its latest line of EEPROM devices. The company’s UNI/O family only requires a single trace be paved from the microcontroller EEPROM—and even a fresh engineering graduate could be trusted to handle the routing of a single trace (Fig. 1). The lone I/O combines both the clock and data into a single bit stream using the Manchester encoding technique.

The six devices in the family can handle data rates from 10 to 100 kHz and provide 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 kbits of data storage (128 to 2048 by 8). Best of all, each device is available in a three-pin SOT-23 package. Yet even with only three legs, they can kick some circuit butt, with features such as status registoring devices, printer cartridge sensors, rechargeable battery sensors, and portable data loggers.

The devices support 1.8/2.5-V to 5.5-V operating voltage ranges. In addition to the SOT-23, versions are available in eight-pin PDIP, MSOP, SOIC, and TDFN formats. Pricing ranges between $0.22 and $0.31 in 10,000-unit quantities. And so you can get your feet wet right away, UNI/O devices are included with Microchip’s MPLAB serial memory kit, which includes a device programmer and drivers for various MCUs for less than $80 (Fig. 2).

MICROCHIP • www.microchip.com/unio