January 2026: MIKROE, the embedded solutions company that dramatically cuts development time by providing innovative hardware and software products based on proven standards, has signed a multi-year MCU development tool support deal with Renesas Electronics Corporation, a global semiconductor solution provider headquartered in Tokyo. The agreement commits MIKROE to providing development tools for 500 of Renesas’ most popular MCUs, plus upcoming new releases. A ‘Planet Debug’ remote board farm, which enables developers anywhere in the world to remotely debug code without having to invest in any hardware, has also been established – the first of its kind for Renesas.
Tool support for the Renesas MCUs will be provided via MIKROE’s NECTO Multi-Architectural IDE and Click board™ compact add-on boards that enable developers to rapidly provide proof-of-concept, then prototype and code new embedded projects. Click boards are fully compatible with the open source mikroBUS™ socket and can be used on any host system supporting the mikroBUS standard. They come with the mikroSDK open-source libraries, offering excellent flexibility for evaluation and customization.
Comments Neb Matic, MIKROE’s CEO: “We are very excited about this collaboration deal with Renesas. Developers need only to download the latest version of NECTO Studio. This will give them access to development tool support for many popular Renesas MCUs. We are launching with 500 specified MCUs, and will add new devices as they are launched. If you read about a new device you will immediately be able to start programming and debugging with it through NECTO without having to wait for hardware.”
MIKROE has been rolling out its Planet Debug remote board farms in Europe and the Americas, and is planning to promote jointly with Renesas the hardware-as-a-service platform through extensive webinars and other programs. Designers using Renesas devices can reserve time – free of charge – on the remote board farm which is configured to their requirements. This enables them to develop and debug their own applications code remotely through the NECTO Studio IDE without having to source the hardware, wait for it to arrive and then configure it. Planet Debug remote board farms are enabled by MIKROE’s innovative CODEGRIP, the world’s first device which allows programming and debugging to be performed over Wi-Fi. Explains Matic: ” The beauty of Planet Debug is that, through NECTO, you can remotely see real images of real boards in real time – it is not a simulation.”
Comments Mohammed Dogar, Vice President, Embedded Processing Marketing at Renesas: “This collaboration with MIKROE empowers our customers to begin development with our newest MCUs, immediately after they are announced. This gives them a significant head start and cost savings. By leveraging 24/7 access to boards on MIKROE’s Planet Debug remote board farms and choosing from thousands of functional code examples on the EmbeddedWiki embedded projects platform, Renesas customers gain direct access to code development resources that accelerate time to market.”
