Sparkfun Thing Plus – Quicklogic EOS S3 Arm eFPGA board launched in Crowd Supply

SparkFun Electronics is a well-known electronics retailer that usually sells its in-house developed or third-party boards through its own online store. But this time around, the company decided to launch “Sparkfun Thing Plus – Quicklogic EOS S3” through Crowd Supply crowdfunding platform.

The board is based on QuickFeather board designed with the same Quicklogic EOS S3 Arm Cortex-M4 plus embedded FPGA SoC, but follows Sparkfun’s Thing Plus form factor with a Qwiic connector and a different mix of sensors.

Sparkfun Thing Plus – Quicklogic EOS S3 (QTPLUS-1.0) board specifications:

• SoC – QuickLogic EOS S3 MCU + eFPGA SoC with Arm Cortex-M4F Microcontroller up to 80 MHz, up to 512 Kb SRAM, and an embedded FPGA (eFPGA) with 2400 effective logic cells, 64 Kb RAM
• Storage – 16 Mbit SPI NOR flash (GigaDevice GD25Q16CEIGR)
• Sensors
  • STMicro LIS2DH12TR accelerometer
  • Digital pulse density modulation (PDM) microphone with Wake-on-Sound (WoS) feature: Vesper VM3011-U1
• Expansion
  • 20x Feather-designed GPIO, plus 14x extra GPIO, all with 2.54mm pitch, with I2C, SPI, UART, I2S, etc…
  • 1x I2C Qwiic connector
• Programming/Debugging – SWD programming connector for use with USB-TTL converter
• Misc – RGB LED, user & Reset push-buttons
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB Type-C port (regulated to 3.3 V)
  • 2-pin JST connector for LiPo battery; Microchip MCP73831/2 based charging circuit
• Dimensions – 70×22.9mm

Just like QuickFeather, Sparkfun EOS S3 board can run FreeRTOS or Zephyr RTOS, supports TensorFlow Lite and SensiML machine learning software, as well as open-source FPGA tools such as SymbiFlow and Renode. You’ll find links to software resources in our previous post about QuickLogic EOS S3 SoC.

The Quick connector will give access to over 150 Qwiic-compatible expansion boards, which are connected through a 4-pin JST polarized Qwiic cable, and daisy-chainable to add two or more Qwicc expansion modules to your project.

There’s a single reward type of Crowd Supply with the board going for $39 plus $8 shipping to the US, and $18 to the rest of the world. Note that while all photos above are in black, the mass-produced boards, scheduled to ship at the end of May, will come with a red PCB.

Thanks to SK for the tip.

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