Electronic Pedometer

Overview

Electronic pedometers are becoming very popular as healthcare devices as they provide an easy way to check calorie usage by counting the number of steps a person walks. Recently, some digital music players and mobile phones have been introduced with built-in pedometer functions. Since a pedometer is carried as you walk and may be in use for a long period of time, low power consumption is essential, as is compactness, lightness and extended battery life. A variety of methods are used to output serial data from the pedometer’s accelerometer to an MCU that supports these communication formats. In addition, the pedometer is often required to link to a PC or a mobile phone with USB or Bluetooth, to store pedometer measurement data.

Renesas’ 78K0/Lx3 and the R8C/Lx Series of MCUs provide low power consumption and are equipped with UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter), I²C (Inter-Integrated Circuit), and SSU (Synchronous Serial communication Unit) serial communication functions. Additional functions, such as an LCD drive circuit, OCO (On-Chip Oscillator), WDT (Watchdog Timer), and RTC (Real-Time Clock) substantially reduce the number of external components required by the pedometer. This contributes to a compact design and lower cost.