Seeed Studio has introduced a brand new entry in its ultra-compact XIAO vary of microcontroller growth boards, the XIAO RA4M1 — powered, because the title suggests, by Renesas’ RA4M1 Arm Cortex-M4 processor.
“For the reason that launch of the Arduino UNO R4 in March 2023, we have obtained many requests to include the highly effective Renesas RA4M1 microcontroller (MCU) into the favored Seeed Studio XIAO type issue,” says Seeed Studio’s Lily Li of the demand for the corporate’s newest board. “We’re excited to announce that it’s lastly right here with the brand new Seeed Studio XIAO RA4M1!”
After which there have been ten: the XIAO household of compact growth boards now has a Renesas RA4M1 mannequin. (📷: Seeed Studio)
The comparability to the Arduino UNO R4 is barely pure: the corporate launched the UNO R4 WiFi and Minima boards final yr as the most important refresh to its best-selling microcontroller growth board household ever, lastly breaking away from eight-bit AVR microcontrollers by shifting to the Renesas RA4M1 with its 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 core operating at as much as 48MHz with {hardware} floating-point unit (FPU).
The Seeed XIAO RA4M1 makes use of the very same chip, full with 32kB of static RAM (SRAM) and 256kB of flash reminiscence, however in a significantly smaller form-factor. 11 general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) pins are introduced out to castellated breadboard-friendly headers at both aspect of the compact board, as with different fashions within the XIAO vary — however an extra eight can be found on check pads on the rear, appropriate for soldered-lead or pogo-pin use, increasing the obtainable GPIO pins to 19.
The board consists of the same old 11 GPIO pins to both aspect of the PCB, plus an additional 9 on check pads on the rear. (📷: Seeed Studio)
Options of the board embrace USB Kind-C for information and energy, a user-accessible USB 2.0 channel, 14-bit analog to digital converter (ADC), 12-bit digital to analog converter (DAC), CAN bus, and an on-board RGB LED. There are 4 working modes, Seeed explains, with the deepest sleep mode drawing simply 45μA — and pads on the again help an non-obligatory lithium battery with cost administration.
The XIAO RA4M1 is out there to pre-order now on the Seeed Studio retailer at $4.99 earlier than quantity reductions, forward of transport later this month; the corporate has additionally introduced an early adopter program, which supplies authors and maintainers of “well-liked open supply Arduino tasks” with two free boards and entry to technical help to ease the method of porting to the brand new chip.