Design and Implementation of Firmware for Low-cost Small PCR Devices

In this paper, we design and implement a firmware for low-cost small PCR devices. To minimize machine code size, the proposed firmware controls real-time tasks simultaneously only with support of the hardware interrupt, but without support of the operating system program. The proposed firmware has the host-local structure in which the firmware receives operation commands from PC and sends operation results to PC through usb communication. We implement a low-cost small PCR device with the proposed firmware loaded on microchip PIC18F4550 chip, and verify that the implemented PCR device significantly reduces cost and volume size of existing commercial PCR devices with a similar performance.