A new "branch" of TI's MSP430 MCU family runs on 0.9V and offers ROM and RAM-based versions. An analog "pool" of devices lets designers create a variety of analog peripherals.

Three new wireless kits from Texas Instruments give engineers a way to quickly work with RFID, short-range communication, and ZigBee wireless devices. These kits build on TI's earlier Stellaris DK-LM3S9B96 kit.

Touch sensors might look complicated to design, but a new chip from Cypress Semiconductor should help engineers and product designers create touch controls to replace on/off switches or momentary-action pushbuttons. Design software simplifies creating the controls and specifying substrate materials.

The five-chip family of timing and pulsing chips--TimerBlox--from Linear Technology lets engineers quickly design circuits to create pulses, modulate pulse widths, serve as one-shot (monostable) pulse sources, and create timing delays. The SOT23 packages and 12 dev boards from LTC make it easy to breadboard and experiment with these 6-pin ICs that generally need only one, two, or three external resistors.

Get a handle on Texas Instruments' MSP430 MCUs with the $4.30 Value Line kit. The small MCU--2 kbytes or flash and 128 bytes of RAM--will work well in alarms, game controls, sensors, small consumer devices, electronic locks, light control, and similar applications that don't require a lot of code.