Arduino Portenta H7 Lite is a cost-down version of Portenta H7 STM32H7 that shaves off a little over $30 of the Arduino Pro board by doing without a wireless module nor USB-C video output and opting for a lower cost Microchip ATECC608 secure element.
Arduino says the new board provides a cost-optimized solution for companies developing high-end industrial machinery, laboratory equipment, computer vision, PLCs, robotics controllers, and mission-critical devices.
strikethrough):
- Microcontroller – STMicro STM32H747XI Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz + M4 @ 200 MHz MCU with 2MB dual-bank Flash memory, 1 MB RAM, Chrom-ART graphical hardware accelerator
- System Memory – 2MB SDRAM (upgradeable up to 64MB)
- Storage – 16MB QSPI NOR Flash (Upgradeable up to 128MB)
- Connectivity
2.4GHz WiFi 802.11b/g/n up to 65 Mbps and Bluetooth 5.1 BR/EDR/LE via Murata 1DX module- On-board 10/100M PHY
- Video I/F – MIPI DSI & 8-bit camera interfaces via 80-pin expansion connector,
DisplayPort over USB-C port - USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port for power (PD) and programming
, and DisplayPort output - I/Os
- Arduino MKR headers with UART1, 6x Analog input pins, GPIO, PWM, SPI, I2C, Reset, 5V, 3.3V, and GND
- 2x 80 pin high-density connectors
- Storage – SD card signals
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet
- Display – 2-lane MIPI DSI
- Camera – 8-pin camera Interface up to 80 MHz
- Audio – I2S, DMIC, SAI
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 interfaces
- Serial – 4x UART ports (2 with flow control), CAN bus (Tx/Rx)
- 2x I2C, SPI
- 8× ADC pins with 16-bit max. resolution
- 2× 12-bit DAC (@ 1 MHz)
- 6x GPIO and 10x PWM
- Debug – SWD interface
- 5-pin I2C ESLOV connector with 1.0mm pitch
- 3.3V operating voltage
- Security – Microchip ATECC608 (instead of NXP SE0502)
- Misc – 22x timers and watchdogs
- Power Supply
- 5V via USB-C port or VIN pin
- Support for 3.7V/700mAH minimum LiPo single-cell battery; integrated charger
- Consumption – 2.95 μA in Standby mode (Backup SRAM OFF, RTC/LSE ON)
- Temperature Range – -40 °C to +85 °C
The Portenta H7 Lite can be programmed either with the Arduino IDE or MicroPython, with support for Arduino sketches on top of the Arm Mbed OS, Native Mbed applications, MicroPython/JavaScript via an interpreter, and TensorFlow Lite for AI applications.
The latest Arduino Pro board can either be used as a standalone embedded microcontroller board, or as the module for a larger carrier board such as the Portenta Carrier thanks to two 80-pin board-to-board connectors.
You can purchase Portenta H7 Lite now for $72 or 60 Euros on the Arduino store, which compares to $103.40 for the original Portenta H7. Additional information may be found on the product page.
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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A GRBL parser running on this could be impressively efficient!
Aren’t there better ways to go about that? Are you thinking for CNC machining or 3D printing? If the latter, Klipper is a much better solution.
It’s for my laser engraver. In order to print raster images at high speed (3000+ mm/mn) it requires a fast CPU. I slightly overclocked the arduino nano on the board (24 MHz vs 16 initially) that allowed me to cross a nice step, but I’m thinking about migrating to the GRBL-HAL at some point and use one of the supported boards. Better do that for real gains though. This one seems worth trying.
What s shame RPI and similar are not up to it.
I’d recommend a Teensy board instead, but that’s more of a personal preference. I’m surprised that there isn’t something like Klipper for laser engravers.
> I’d recommend a Teensy board instead, but that’s more of a personal preference. Good point, I remember noticing its support in the past. I initially was not interested because my board uses an arduino-nano board with a pinout that almost no other board supports, so that would force me to design an adapter board that I initially wanted to avoid. But I finally came to the conclusion that I will not have any other choice anyway. > I’m surprised that there isn’t something like Klipper for laser engravers. I never heard about Klipper before. I’ve read the description and… Read more »
Well, a few things. 🙂 I am no fan of python for the exact reasons you mention. Most python code is trash. Klipper is not. It’s written by people who actually are good at coding and it uses a lot of heavily optimized libraries for the heavy lifting. For those unfamiliar, traditional 3D printers often use a 16MHz 8 bit AVR processor to decode the GCODE commands and translate them into precisely timed STEP and DIRECTION pulses to a set of stepper motor controllers. That’s a lot to ask of a little processor with very limited CPU and memory. Klipper… Read more »
The reason for a high level coding language, is it is ment to make doing the job easier.
Like a UI enables people with no command coding training, the ability to use a computer.
If you find the high level non machine code language a problem, in doing the job, then ask yourself, why are you using it.
> The reason for a high level coding language, is it is ment to make doing the job easier. When chosen by developers, yes. When chosen by companies, it’s often done on purpose because such developers can be much cheaper. It can be disguised behind “wow we are a super strong community blah blah” but the reality is that it’s a business model to build inexpensive developer teams where anyone can be easily replaced as long as stackoverflow remains accessible :-/ Developers need to be cautious not to be enclosed into such situations where they have little hope of seeing… Read more »
That’s indeed what I understood from there. They’re advertising high step rates but I’m really unsure about the really perceived benefits. I mean, to get back to my example of 600 pixels per second with a laser modulated at 12 kHz, that means a pixel only receives 20 pulses, which means a resolution of +/- 5% only. And that doesn’t even factor in the laser module’s latency. As such *for this use case*, I don’t see much that can be improved from the software side. But it probably matters more for 3D printers.