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October 27, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

WBZ451 Curiosity Board features Microchip PIC32CX-BZ2 BLE and Zigbee 3.0 microcontroller

WBZ451 Curiosity Board Bluetooth LE Zigbee 3.0

Microchip WBZ451 Curiosity Board features the company’s Microchip’s WBZ451PE Bluetooth Low Energy 5.2 and Zigbee 3.0 RF module based on the new Microchip PIC32CX-BZ2 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F wireless microcontroller. WBZ451 Curiosity Board (EV96B94A) specifications: Wireless module – WBZ451PE Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee RF Module with Microchip PIC32CX-BZ2 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F wireless microcontroller @ up to 64 MHz, 128KB RAM, 1MB flash, 2.4 GHz radio for Bluetooth LE 5.2 and 802.15.4 (Zigbee 3.0) Tx output power – Up +12 dBm Rx sensitivity – Up to -103 dBm PCB antenna 29x I/O pins Storage – 64Mbit QSPI flash Expansion – mikroBUS socket for MikroElectronika Click adapter boards Sensor – Microchip MCP9700A analog voltage temperature sensor Debugging On-board Programmer/Debug Circuit using PICkit On-board 4 (PKoB4) based on Microchip SAME70 MCU On-board USB to UART Serial Converter with Hardware Flow Control based on Microchip MCP2200 10-pin Arm Serial Wire Debug (SWD) header for […]

May 25, 2022May 25, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Microchip SAMA7G54 is a single-core Arm Cortex-A7 microprocessor for low power AI camera & audio applications

Microchip has just announced the 1 GHz SAMA7G54 single-core Arm Cortex-A7 microprocessor (MPU) with MIPI CSI-2 and parallel camera interfaces, as well as up to four I2S, one SPDIF transmitter and receiver, and a 4-stereo channel audio sample rate converter. The company specifically launched a single-core processor to offer a lower power solution for AI camera and audio solutions, and the chip is coupled with the MCP16502 power management IC that has been optimized to provide the best power/performance ratio for the SAMA7G54. Microchip SAMA7G54 specifications: CPU – Arm Cortex-A7 based MPU @ up to 1GHz with 256KB L2 cache Memory – DDR2/DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3 up to 533MHz Storage – Quad SPI, Octal SPI, 3x SD/eMMC Camera I/F – MIPI CSI-2 (2-lane up to 1.5 Gbps each) and 12-bit parallel camera Up to 8 Mpixel @ 30 fps Audio – Up to 4x I2S, PDM, SPDIF (Rx/Tx), 4 stereo channel ASRC Networking […]

October 25, 2021October 24, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

My experience installing Libero SoC in Ubuntu and Windows 10

Libero SoC Windows Silver License ACTEL_BASESOC

A few weeks ago, I received Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit with FPGA fabric and hard RISC-V cores capable of handling Linux. I wrote “Getting Started with Yocto Linux BSP” tutorial for the board, and I had initially titled the current post “Getting Started with FPGA development using Libero SoC and Polarfire FPGA SoC”. I assumed I would write one or two paragraphs about the installation process, and then show how to work with Libero SoC Design Suite to create an FPGA bitstream. But instead, I spent countless hours trying to install the development tools. So I’ll report my experience to let readers avoid some of the pitfalls, and hopefully save time. (Failing to) Install Libero SoC v2021.v2 on Ubuntu 20.04 If we go to the download page, we’ll see Libero SoC v2021.2 for Windows and Libero SoC v2021.2 for Linux. Since my computer is running Ubuntu 20.04, I decided […]

October 2, 2021April 5, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Getting Started with the Yocto Linux BSP for Polarfire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit

Getting Started Guide PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit

Last month I received Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle development kit that features PolarFire SoC FPGA with a Penta–core 64-bit RISC-V CPU subsystem and an FPGA with 254K LE, and booted it into the pre-installed Linux operating systems based on OpenEmbedded. Today, I’ll show how to get started with the Yocto BSP and run the EEMBC CoreMark benchmark, and I’ll check out the FPGA with Libero SoC Design Suite in a couple of weeks. Operating Systems supported by PolarFire SoC FPGA My initial idea was to focus this part of the review on Linux on RISC-V status, checking some system information, running some benchmarks (e.g. SBC-Bench), compiling the Linux kernel, and installing services like a LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx (pronounced Engine-X), MySQL, PHP) which could be used for WordPress hosting for instance. But then I looked at the operating systems supported with Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA. There’s a Yocto Linux […]

September 17, 2021April 5, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

A first look at Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle RISC-V development board

Formally launched on Crowd Supply a little over a year ago, Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle (codenamed MPFS-ICICLE-KIT-ES) was one of the first Linux & FreeBSD capable RISC-V development boards. The system is equipped with PolarFire SoC FPGA comprised a RISC-V CPU subsystem with four 64-bit RISC-V (RV64GC) application cores, one 64-bit RISC-V real-time core (RV64IMAC), as well as FPGA fabric. Backers of the board have been able to play with it for several months ago, but Microchip is now sending the board to more people for evaluation/review, and I got one of my own to experiment with. That’s good to have a higher-end development board instead of the usual hobbyist-grade board. Today, I’ll just have a look at the kit content and main components on the board before playing with Linux and FPGA development tools in an upcoming or two posts. Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Unboxing The board […]

December 29, 2020December 29, 2020 by Saumitra Jagdale - 7 Comments

IoT development board comes with AVR or PIC MCU, WiFi module

Microchip AVR-IoT and PIC-IoT development boards have AVR and PIC MCUs respectively, which enables a simple interface between embedded applications and the cloud. The IoT development boards can securely transfer data to Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT platform with a WiFi connection. The IoT development boards also include an onboard debugger which can be used to program and debug the MCUs without any need for external hardware. The IoT development boards also have an integrated lithium battery charger, which makes it a rechargeable device and allows easier deployment for a “ready-to-go solution.” The AVR-IoT WA development board integrates the ATECC608A CryptoAuthentication chip for security protocols and the ATWINC1510 Wi-Fi network controller for connectivity. The development board combines the ATmega4808 MCU 8-bit AVR MCU running at up to 20 MHz and offers a wide range of flash sizes up to 48 KB. The unit uses a “flexible and low-power architecture, including […]

September 18, 2020September 21, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Microchip SAMD21 Machine Learning Evaluation Kits Work with Cartesiam, Edge Impulse and Motion Gestures Solutions

While it all started in the cloud Artificial Intelligence is now moving at the very edge is ultra-low power nodes, and Microchip has launched two SAMD21 Arm Cortex-M0+ machine learning evaluation kits that now work with AI/ML solutions from Cartesiam, Edge Impulse, and Motion Gestures. Bot machine learning evaluation kits come with SAMD21G18 Arm Cortex-M0+ 32-bit MCU, an on-board debugger (nEDBG), an ATECC608A CryptoAuthentication secure element, ATWINC1510 Wi-Fi network controller, as well as Microchip MCP9808 high accuracy temperature sensor and a light sensor. But EV45Y33A development kit is equipped with an add-on board featuring Bosch’s BMI160 low-power Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), while EV18H79A features an add-on board with TDK InvenSense ICM-42688-P 6-axis MEMS. The photo above makes it clear both SAMD21 machine learning evaluation kits rely on the same baseboard with a MikroBus socket connected to either 6DOF IMU 2click or 6DOF IMU 14 click add-on board from MikroElektronika. Both […]

April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

QuickDAQ.mikroBUS Development Board Leverages Visual Programming and MikroE Click Boards (Crowdfunding)

mikroBUS is a socket interface that allows you to connect MikroElektronik (MikroE) Click add-on boards that can be buttons, sensors, a servo controller, a wireless module, and practically anything you may think of since there are over 700 Click boards to choose from. We already covered several SBC with MikroBUS sockets starting with SolidRun HummingBoard Gate board that offered a single socket for 150+ Click boards at the time (2015). Other boards include Azure Sphere MT3620 with two MikroBUS sockets and MikroElektronika’s own Flip & Click board designed to take one Arduino shield and up to four Click boards. Another upcoming option is QuickDAQ.mikroBUS developer by EmbeddeTech in collaboration with MikroElektronika, powered by a Microchip PIC32 MCU, offering three MikroBUS sockets, and designed to work with “Virtuoso Low-Code Environment” that allows people to program the board using NodeRed-like visual programming and generate a Visual Studio project with code from the […]