industry news
Subscribe Now

Atmel Introduces Miniature LIN Family with Lowest Power Consumption for Automotive Switch Scan and Ambient Lighting Applications

Heilbronn, Germany, November 15, 2012 – Atmel® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, today announced the availability of a new LIN family for automotive switch scan applications and in-vehicle ambient lighting control. The new devices, Atmel’s ATA664151 and ATA664251, include a broad range of on-chip functionalities that competing solutions can achieve only by combining multiple devices.

Available in ultra-small packages measuring just 5x5mm and 7x7mm, these new LIN devices significantly reduce the end-application footprint, cutting down the overall cost and development time for automotive ambient lighting applications.
Switch scan applications used in automotive doors, roof modules, and center stacks benefit from an extremely low sleep mode power consumption. The current sources are controlled by three independent pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals, which are ideal for ambient lighting solutions controlling RGB LEDs.

Overview: ATA664151/ ATA664251 LIN Devices

The ATA664151 and ATA664251 LIN devices include an eight-channel high-voltage switch interface with current sources and analog voltage multiplexer to scan switches in automotive applications with currents up to 20mA. The integrated state change detector allows switch scan applications with extremely low current consumption. The current sources are controlled by three independent PWM signals enabling the device to act as an ambient light circuit to control RGB LEDs. A LIN 2.2 and SAEJ2602-2-compliant transceiver, based on Atmel’s third-generation LIN transceiver IP with best-in-class EMC immunity as well a low-drop 5V voltage regulator with 80mA current capability and an adjustable window watchdog, are also included.

The ATA664251 is a system-in-package solution with an ATA664151 chip and an Atmel AVR® 8-bit ATtiny167 microcontroller (MCU). The low-power RISC-based ATtiny167 MCU combines 16KB Flash memory, 512B EEPROM, 512-Byte SRAM, 16 general-purpose I/O lines, 32 general-purpose working registers, 8-bit and 16-bit timer/counter units with compare modes, a universal serial interface (USI), a LIN UART, internal and external interrupts, an 11-channel 10-bit A/D converter and three software selectable power-saving modes.

This combination enables the development of simple, inexpensive, yet powerful nodes for ambient lighting and switch scan applications.

Availability and Pricing

Samples of the ATA664151 and the ATA664251 LIN ICs in small QFN32 (5x5mm, ATA664151) and QFN48 (7x7mm, ATA664251) packages are available now. Pricing starts at US $0.99 (ATA664151) / US $1.79 (ATA664251) for bulk shipments of 10,000-piece quantities. To support engineers and accelerate a quick start with the IC, Atmel provides complete evaluation kits (ATAK42001-V1 for ATA664151 and ATAK43001-V1 for ATA664251).

About Atmel

Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry’s broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.
© 2012 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel®, Atmel logo and combinations thereof, AVR®, and others are registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
May 6, 2026
Hollywood has struck gold with The Lord of the Rings and Dune'”so which sci-fi and fantasy books should filmmakers tackle next?...

featured paper

Quickly and accurately identify inter-domain leakage issues in IC designs

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software

Power domain leakage is a major IC reliability issue, often missed by traditional tools. This white paper describes challenges of identifying leakage, types of false results, and presents Siemens EDA’s Insight Analyzer. The tool proactively finds true leakage paths, filters out false positives, and helps circuit designers quickly fix risks—enabling more robust, reliable chip designs. With detailed, context-aware analysis, designers save time and improve silicon quality.

Click to read more

featured chalk talk

Designing Scalable IoT Mesh Networks with Digi XBee® for Wi-SUN
Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and Digi and Silicon Labs
In this episode of Chalk Talk, Quinn Jones from Digi, Chad Steider from Silicon Labs and Amelia Dalton explore how Wi-SUN Micro-Mesh can reduce cost and simplify deployment for your next IoT mesh network. They also investigate the benefits that Digi XBee solutions bring to these types of networks and how you can jump start your next IoT mesh network design with Silicon Labs and Digi.
May 4, 2026
12,757 views