Belgian open supply electronics specialist Phyx has designed a low-cost, compact improvement board within the model of Adafruit’s QT Py and Seeed Studio’s XIAO households — however that includes the WCH Electronics CH32V203 RISC-V microcontroller at its coronary heart: the LANA TNY.
“LANA is a small improvement board based mostly across the WCH CH32V203 RISC-V microcontroller,” Phyx’ Wim Van Gool and Gert Van Gool write of their creation. “TNY is our tackle the Adafruit QT Py and Seeed Studio XIAO specs however with added SMD [Surface Mount Device] pins for optionally available additional IO [Input/Output] capabilities and a inbuilt WS2811 appropriate LED output.”
For those who’re searching for a low-cost small-footprint RISC-V dev board, which punches above its weight, the LANA TNY could also be for you. (📷: Phyx)
The center of the compact board is, because the Van Gools say, WCH Electronics’ ultar-low-cost CH32V203 — a 32-bit microcontroller based mostly on the free and open supply RISC-V instruction set structure and operating at as much as 144MHz. There’s 10kB of static RAM (SRAM) on board, plus 32kB of high-speed flash and an extra 244kB of exterior flash with execute-in-place (XIP) help.
It is the board’s design, greater than the microcontroller on high, that intrigues, although. At first look, it is a clone of a QT Py or a XIAO — full with USB Kind-C connector for knowledge and energy and two rows of 0.1″ breadboard-friendly pin-headers to both aspect for the general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) connectivity. A more in-depth look, although, reveals castellations that do not fairly line up with the 0.1″ holes — and which, as a substitute, present entry to all of the full-size 0.1″ pins plus a variety of further GPIO indicators that will be in any other case inaccessible.
0.05″-pitch castellations convey out extra pins than you’d usually discover in such a small-footprint board. (📷: Adafruit)
For software program help, Phyx recommends the board be programmed utilizing the Embeetle IDE, which incorporates official help, the Arduino IDE with the WCH32 core put in, Platform.io with WCH-Hyperlink, Charles Lohr’s CH32V003fun, or WCH’s personal MounRiver Studio. “The CH32V203 has an USB bootloader that may be activated by holding down the button when plugging within the USB cable,” the Van Gools explains. “Alternatively you may decide to make use of a WCH-Hyperlink programmer and debugger to hook up with the uncovered SWD [Serial Wire Debug] pins.”
“LANA is a small improvement board based mostly across the WCH CH32V203 RISC-V microcontroller,” Phyx’s Wim Van Gool and Gert Van Gool write of their creation. “TNY is our tackle the Adafruit QT Py and Seeed Studio XIAO specs however with added SMD [Surface Mount Device] pins for optionally available additional IO [Input/Output] capabilities and a inbuilt WS2811 appropriate LED output.”