Earlier this year, we noticed some RealTek RTK8720DN dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0 IoT modules, and quickly mentioned Ameba RTL8722DM development board available for under $50.
If you found the price of the board a bit expensive for what it had to offer, the good news is that Ameba RTL8722DM Cortex-M33/M23 IoT development board is now selling for $23.90 on Seeed Studio or Good Display.
- MCU
- ARMv8M Real-M300 Cortex-M33 compatible MCU @ 200MHz
- ARMv8M Real-M200 Cortex-M23 compatible MCU @ 20MHz
- Memory – 4.5MB embedded SRAM in SoC
- Storage – 2MB external flash
- Connectivity
- Dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n 1×1 WiFi 4 (20/40MHz)
- Bluetooth 5
- SIG Mesh networking
- Supports both central and peripheral modes
- Display – 8-bit LCD up to 645×645 resolution @ 30FPS or 6-bit LCD up to 527×527 resolution @ 60 FPS
- Audio Codec – ADC, DAC, I2S
- Security – Hardware cryptographic engine, Arm Trust-Zone, Secure boot, Wi-Fi WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA3, WPS
- Other Peripheral Interfaces
- 4x UART, 3x SPI (Master or Slave), 2x I2C (Master or Slave)
- 1x SDIO Slave, 1x SD card supported
- 18 x PWM
- 8*8 Key-scan and Touch key
- Max. 55 GPIOs
- Power Supply – 5V via USB
- Dimensions – 78.0 x 71.3mm
You’ll find links to the user manual, SDK compatible with IAR, GCC, and Arduino IDE, as well as hardware design files on Ameba website. The board is especially suited to applications leveraging dual-band WiFI and/or Bluetooth 5.0 including Smart Home, Smart City, Industrial IoT, IoT Hub/Gateway, Smart Toys, Wi-Fi Audio/Entertainment device and Gaming Joystick, and Wi-Fi remote controller.
It ships with one IPEX antenna, as well as two Arduino female headers that you’d need to solder if you plan on using Arduino shields. Seeed Studio also explains the final version of the board will have all the GPIO pins bent at an angle of 90° from the board to allow convenient access to the Arduino pins.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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The RTL8722DM has cortex M4 + M0 not a M33?
That’s what I thought initially, but Seeed Studio talks about Cortex-M33 and Cortex-M23 compatible cores.
The first time, I read about RTL872x WiSoC I only found about KM4 cores, then last time, it was Cortex-M4+M0, and now it has changed to Cortex-M33/M23 compatible, so it’s confusing…
Your probably correct RTL872xD Datasheet mentions TrustZone-M + Armv8-M so most likely M33/M23 .
Reltek licensed ARMv8-M instruction set and created their own Real-M200/M300/M500 cores.
2mb is not enough flash
I hoped they cleaned up there sdk by now, i tried the RTL8710 a few years ago, the harware seemed ok, but the sdk was so messy i gave up on it, they also promised mbed support witch never came.
Probably not. It’s typical for a lot of hw producer to not care that much about it. So, just hope for an integration into a RTOS. Or you have to get your hands dirty 🙂