Arduino ships its UNO R4 board with 32bit Renesas processor
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Arduino is shipping its updated UNO board with a 32bit ARM Cortex-M4 processor from Renesas and a WiFi version with a dual-core chip from Espresssif.
The UNO R4 updates the popular UNO R3 and comes in two versions as announced back in March: the basic UNO R4 Minima for €18 and the UNO R4 WiFi at €25 and both are available now.
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Both preserve the standard form factor, shield compatibility and 5 V power supply of the 8bit UNO R3, but the UNO R4 adds a 48MHz RA4M1 Renesas microcontroller with floating point unit, 32 kB of SRAM and 256 kB of flash memory for more complex projects.
The board runs a real time operating system such as FreeRTOS and Arduino is committed to ensuring that the existing software libraries from the previous AVR-based board are ported across, Alessandro Ranelluci, product manager for the UNO R4 tells eeNews Europe.
“The Uno R4 uses the same form factor as the R3 with the same pinout and 5V operating voltage. When they are not compatible as there are low level features used on the AVR microcontroller on the R3 there is active work to port the missing libraries so we are fully committed to compatibility,” he said.
“We moved from the ATMega to the RA4M1 which is used in the automotive sector as it is 5V but also it has many features that are relevant for motor control. We had been looking for a microcontroller for the upgrade, keeping in mind we wanted to keep the 5V operating voltage and there are not many options in the market that are as robust as makers need, drawing a lot of current and surviving issues such as reverse polarity,” he said.
Although Renesas recently made a $10m investment into Arduino, there was no pressure to select a particularly controller, he says, pointing to the choice of the Espressif ESP32-S3 module for WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity on the UNO R4 WiFi version. “We developed a large number of protoypes, so many we could have a museum, but we chose this combination,” he said.
Cloud connected UNO
The WiFi version comes with a 12×8 red LED matrix that supports animations or plotting sensor data. The board is compatible with the Arduino cloud, so there no need for an SD card on the board. “You can upload the code over WiFi and there is a feature for boards to communicate,” he said. “You define which variable to be synced between two or more boards to create fleets of devices talking to each other. When you provision the board to the cloud there is accreditation to make a secure connection with the crypto features of the ESP processor.”
Raspberry Pi
This is not a competitor for the Raspberry Pi, says Ranelluci.
“It is still not a single board computer so it is more power efficient, but it doesn’t have Linux, it’s a microcontroller board for projects with time critical applications and you can run off a battery as there is support for a low power mode that will keep the real time clock,” he said. “We have seen in the maker community people combine a Raspberry Pi with an Arduino board for different tasks. We also have the Portenta x8 which can run Linux and is industrial grade.”
Requests from the Arduino community see the USB port upgraded to USB-C and the maximum power supply voltage increased to 24 V with an improved thermal design. The board provides a CAN bus, which allows users to minimize wiring and execute different tasks in parallel by connecting multiple shields as well as two SPI and two I2C serial ports. It also includes a 12-bit analog DAC and operational amplifier.
A variety of compatible modules can be connected to the board via the Qwiic I2C connector, combined with the large ecosystem of shields for UNO already in the market to build projects without the ned for a breadboard or soldering. There are also additional pins to turn off the microcontroller while keeping the RTC powered by an external buffer battery.
“Last week we joined the Zephyr project so we are going to actively support the Zephyr RTOS as an abstraction layer for all our hardware but there is no ETA for now,” said Ranelluci
Continuing the UNO R3
Arduino will continue to supply the UNO R3 from its two board makers in Italy and says it sees continued strong demand.
“Even the most popular UNO R3 must evolve, though we have no plans to discontinue the board,” said Massimo Banzi, co-founder and chairman at Arduino. “In close collaboration with our partners, Renesas and Espressif, we believe the UNO R4 is the most versatile maker board on the market. Using the WiFi option, users can connect to the Arduino Cloud or other platforms to easily create connected projects.”
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