TIMELINE

In 2021 we remained dedicated to saving time and standardization in the embedded industry. We introduced one more open standard - SiBRAIN.

NECTO Studio continued its quest for perfection and we kept you updated throughout the whole year. This year we had a record of 12 NECTO Studio Updates! Our Click board™ portfolio continued to grow rapidly - we celebrated the release of the 1000th Click board™ in April and released 1111th Click board™ on November 11th. With these two releases, Click boards™ keep the place of the biggest add-on board collection in the world. Planet Debug has had a few significant updates, such as the Setup Request feature, and it is currently facilitated on 3 locations: in MIKROE Headquarters, in the nearby University of NoviSad, in the USA (Minnesota) in Mexico. In 2021 we celebrated our 20th birthday!

We continued making one new product per day, resulting in 281 product releases in 2021! Amazing year is behind us; 2022 bring it on!

Epic, memorable and revolutionary are just some of the words that come to mind when it comes to describing our 2019! It was definitely a year of innovation!

This year was full of amazing achievements that are to numerous to mention, but we will give it a go. We have reached a truly impressive milestone – the release of the 700th Click board™, and we continued publishing one new product every day! We plan on maintaining this tempo throughout 2020 so we can guarantee many more products to come.

We also officially launched our Premium Technical Support, the 8th generation of development boards, CODEGRIP – the world’s first ever programmer and debugger over WiFi, EasyPIC v8 development board, Go to Cloud (G2C) Click, various mikromedias ideal for the rapid development of multimedia and gui-centric applications, the MCU Card standard, and NECTO Studio – a phenomenal cross-platform IDE.

Looking forward to what 2020 brings our way, because it is also going to be momentous!

Our worldwide expansion continues. Among our distributors is now Avnet, and the Arrow Electronics is Mikroe global distributor. The total number of distributors worldwide is 104!

The production of our trademark product: click boards™ has flourished. We’ve marked the 300 clicks milestone, and participated in a very stimulating 50 clicks for 50 days event with Microchip. 2017 was the year when the mikroBUS standard started to appear everywhere.

The amazing thing happened this year - we’ve created another standard: the mikroSDK. The software development kit has become widely accepted because it makes application code portable and reusable on many different platforms and architectures, with virtually no code changes. Speaking of innovation, this year also brought the merging of Visual TFT into compiler IDE. It was yet another example of MikroElektronika’s overarching mission: making things simple for engineers.

The company continued the internal work on restructuring and strengthening the capacities through the expansion of the software department. The total number of Mikroe employees reached 93.

As the workload steadily increased, the year in front of us was bound to be devoted to the settling in of the new, expanded team, and creating efficient ways to cooperate. Teams were teaming up, individuals were stepping up taking over more of responsibilities, and our overall production was growing each month. We’ve managed to pay the building off entirely!

The major project of 2015 was the FT90X solution - the new set of compilers and development boards for the 32-bit FT90x microcontrollers from FTDI Chip. The solution encompassed the FT90x - a completely new architecture, the development board EasyFT90x v7, the Clicker 2 for FT90x Click board™, and the mikroProg for FT90x as the hardware programmer/debugger designed specifically to support the FT90X solution. Also, the first ARM m7 core MCUs were supported in compilers.

The year was marked with frequent visits to the construction site where the new building was slowly taking shape. In between those visits we earned some nominations and awards. At Embedded World in Nuremberg, EasyPIC Fusion was nominated for Best Tool. CEO Nebojsa Matic was proclaimed entrepreneur of the year by Blic, a prominent daily newspaper in Serbia. All the while the company was growing, barely contained by the office space it was in. RS Components and Farnell became our global distributors, joining Mouser. This was also the year where mikromedia boards started growing, first with mikromedia+ for STM32 and mikromedia+ for PIC32MX, then with mikromedia 5 for Tiva. We aslo went the other way, releasing smaller development boards: PIC clicker was introduced, a compact starter kit to complement the growing number of click boards. Finally, by the end of the year, we moved into our new HQ, properly marking the occasion.

With new SMD technology company wanted to introduce 6th generation boards and redesign additional boards to use SMD components too. In the first quarter company released its first PIC32 development board - LV-32MX. In October it announced EasyPIC6, BIGPIC6, EasyAVR6 and BIGAVR6 boards - for the first time with new layout and new SMD components. Since hobbyists and beginners were not so familiar with SMD, the company made sure to provide detailed schematics and manuals with photos of each component in order to show customers that SMD is just as user friendly as through-hole. All compilers were redesigned. New IDE featured docking support, layout and color schemes and new tools. The number of libraries and examples increased dramatically. By the end of the year company released PIC32MX4 multimedia board.

Company outgrew its headquarters in 2005, and there was no space left in Balkanska street. People were close together, most of them in one room. There was a spirit of team work, ideas were bouncing back and forth which created a powerful motivated team capable of fast and creative development. Matic recognized that it was hard to keep the entire company under control of one man, so he decided to create departments which naturally emerged in the course of company’s 6 year history. When company moved to eight times bigger new office space in Visegradska street Matic handpicked new department leaders and promoted them to the new position. He knew what burden they would have to carry, so he apologized in advance to each one of them. Eight departments were formed: Production, Software, Hardware, Publishing, Sales, Marketing, Distribution and Support. Matic remained CEO and chairman of the board. During this time, Support Desk service was introduced on the website and the number of additional boards rises to 44. Company had total of 30 employees.

Second generation boards with on-board USB programmers included EasyPIC2, BIGPIC2, PICPLC6, PICPLC16, EasyAVR2, Easy51 and UNI-DS. BIGPIC2 had MCU cards which enabled the use of high pin count PICs. MikroElektronika developed first dsPIC boards: EasydsPIC, dsPICPRO and dsPICProg as a standalone programmer. First C compiler for PIC was released. It was called mikroC for PIC. mikroPascal for dsPIC followed. Company had a collection of 13 additional boards in offer. All this happened in the first 8 months of the year. In the meantime, team frantically worked on the next (third generation) board. It was released in December 2005. Third generation board featured USB 2.0 programmers and new form factors. mikroBasic for dsPIC was introduced as well as mikroPascal and mikroBasic for AVR compilers. Company grew to have 11 distributors by the end of the year.

This year was a milestone. The first USB PIC programmer in the world was developed by MikroElektronika. It was called PIC Flash. MikroElektronika also became Microchip registered consultant. PICPLC and PIC-Acquisition boards were released. PSoC development board and proprietary programmer were also added to collection. First big orders from abroad were placed at the beginning of the year. Payment via 2CO service was introduced on the website. When Lextronic, who became company’s distributor in France, ordered $5000 worth in boards, the entire team had a huge party. The same night Matic had a car accident and ended up in a hospital for three weeks. He was so bored that he decided to write a new book. “Introduction to PLC controllers”, as he called it, instantly became a top seller. As the year drew to a close, things heated up. The company released its first EasyPIC and BIGPIC boards, as well as first Add-on boards.

Matic and his early team mates were more and more involved in development board designs, and writing books along the way. There was little time left for the magazine. After finishing the entire seventh issue of the magazine alone, typing every letter and editing each photo, Matic decided it was time to shut down the magazine and completely focus on development boards. He spent his entire savings to open a company he named after the magazine - MikroElektronika. The new era had begun, and he couldn’t dream where it would take him and how big the company will become. One of the first boards developed by the company was PIC-Easy - the next generation board for popular PIC microcontrollers.

Mikroelektronika magazine was issued every two months. As the magazine grew to be more and more popular, Matic decided to have an online edition. He started a website with a domain www.MikroElektronika.co.yu. At that time, Microchip microcontrollers began to be more and more popular so he used accumulated knowledge and skills in development board designs to make his first PIC development board. First UART PIC programmers were created alongside.

Business with 68HC11 development boards kept getting better, and Matic decided to move to Belgrade in March 1997. He resided at his aunt’s home in Balkanska street. Matic always wanted to share his knowledge in a way that even beginners can understand. He has always had his own way of presenting rather complex things in a profoundly simple manner. This is why writing articles about electronics was very something he was good at. Still being an undergraduate and self-employed, he began thinking of starting a magazine.