[HN Gopher] Arduino Uno R4 WiFi
___________________________________________________________________
Arduino Uno R4 WiFi
Author : matthewfelgate
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-06-26 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (store.arduino.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (store.arduino.cc)
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Having an onboard display, CAN bus transceiver, and op amp is
| pretty neat. It should enable this Arduino to be the core of a
| lot more projects when otherwise it might make more sense to use
| another board or just build the whole circuit from components.
| otherme123 wrote:
| For the onboard display, you can get a ESP32 with an Oled
| integrated.
| numlock86 wrote:
| An RA4M1 with an ESP32-S3 ... as the coprocessor for WiFi and
| BLE? Why not just do everything on the ESP32-S3? The RA4M1 seems
| a little unimpressive next to it. Something like an RA6M4 at
| least would have been cool, though: Add QSPI flash and an
| Ethernet phy ... Yes please! But this? Meh.
| IshKebab wrote:
| What's the point of the RA4M1 if you already have the ESP32?
|
| Based on the data sheets the only guesses I have are that it's
| running at 5V (presumably because Arduino is living in the past),
| and that it has USB support.
|
| Either way this doesn't seem especially compelling compared to
| the many ESP32-C3 boards which generally have less enormous form
| factors and are much much cheaper.
| f_devd wrote:
| ESP32S3 also has USB support, but 5V I/O could be the reason.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| It looks like they have to include a logic level shifter to
| talk to the ESP32, so they could use something similar for
| the IO.
| [deleted]
| wmlavender wrote:
| There are many of us that work with scientific instrumentation
| that has to retain compatibility with 5 volt logic levels. Many
| labs have equipment that is over 50 years old and which is
| still in use. Suppose you tell a scientist that they have to
| replace a working instrument built in the 1960s with a new one
| that costs over $250,000 only because it does not use 3.3 volt
| logic levels. They are going to laugh at you and say that they
| want to keep using the old instrument.
|
| So having cheap and easily available electronics that can still
| interface with 5 volts can be very useful to some of us.
| comboy wrote:
| Level shifting is trivial though.
| IshKebab wrote:
| You can still interface with 5 volts using a level shifter.
| Which is exactly what this board uses so the 3.3V ESP32 can
| talk to the 5V Renesas chip.
| spoiler wrote:
| I never realised older scientific equipment even has
| interfaces for plugging in third party tools! I'm curious,
| how often do you actually have to make stuff that interfaces
| with older lab equipment when developing new equipment. And a
| follow up question would be: is this something you do in
| house, or do you sell this as a service/products?
|
| And if you're allowed to go into detail, can you give a high
| level example of this (too low level might go over my head).
| wmlavender wrote:
| Yes, most scientific lab tools have some way of
| communicating with third-party tools. We tend to shun tools
| that do not, although some vendors are perplexed and/or
| annoyed by this. No one vendor carries everything you need.
|
| There have been several generations of scientific
| instrumentation standards used for connecting products from
| various companies together.
|
| Some take the form of _Crates_ , which can contain
| individual modules that you plug into the crates. For
| example, *NIM* - <https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Nuclear_Instrumentation_Module> - Started in the
| 1960s, but there is a ton of these modules still in use.
| Lots pictures of NIM electronics can be found by doing a
| Google Image search for *nim electronics*.
| *CAMAC* -<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Automated_
| Measurement_and_Control> - Started in the 1970s, but is
| mostly obsolete and removed now. It was the first bus
| standard to provide for computer control of
| instrumentation, mostly by PDP-11s and then later VAXes.
| It could send you 24-bit data words at the blindingly fast
| speed of 1 MHz. Some pictures of them can be found by a
| Google Image search for "*camac electronics*.
| *VME* - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMEbus> - Originally
| created in the 1980s as a computer bus for m68k computers.
| But it found a new, far faster life as a scientific
| instrumentation standard. A number of bus standards like
| VXI have attempted to claim the throne of VME, but VME is
| still widely in use. Some pictures of this can be found by
| a Google Search for "vme beamline electronics*.
|
| The other major form factor is _cables_
| *RS232-RS485-etc* - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232>
| - An ancient standard started in 1960, but still widely in
| use. *GPIB or IEEE488* -
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE-488> - Originally
| created by Hewlett Packard, but still widely in use. Seems
| to be on the decline these days. *USB* -
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB> - The new contender for
| the throne. Its use is growing by leaps and bounds with
| each passing year. Bear in mind that one of the largest
| uses here of USB is for USB-to-Serial dongles that let us
| plug in the RS232 and RS485 stuff we are still using.
| *Ethernet* - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet> -
| Using mostly TCP and UDP, but not always. This is the
| other contender for the throne. *Short-lived
| standards* - There were a variety of other standards that
| had short periods on the stage, like parallel ports,
| Firewire, SCSI, proprietary bare ribbon cables, etc. Most
| of this has gone away, except for the proprietary ribbon
| cables *(sigh)*.
|
| I do most of my work these days for two organizations,
| namely MRCAT <http://mrcat.iit.edu/> and BioCAT
| <https://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/> which both make use of X-ray
| beams at the Advanced Photon Source
| <https://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Overview>. The APS is a 1.1
| kilometer electron storage ring, which produces high
| intensity X-ray beams at 70 _sectors_ around the ring. My
| employers use 3 beamlines at 2 of those sectors for
| materials research and for biophysics.
|
| You can find a lot of beamline pictures by doing a Google
| search for _advanced photon source beamlines_.
| kennywinker wrote:
| That little LED grid is super nice! I can imagine that will
| simplify a ton of projects - instead of having to attach an
| external display, or your own LED grid, you can provide basic
| feedback about what's going on in your device thru the built-in
| LED grid.
| elromulous wrote:
| It's been so frustrating that espressif offerings are basically
| the only wifi mcu options. Yes, there are a handful of other
| options, but they all fall short in one or more of
| cost|sdk|availability.
|
| If you're wondering why I need an espressif alternative so badly
| - many companies won't rely on Chinese companies for components,
| especially if they're not easily interchangeable. There's always
| the concern of a Chinese backdoor (I prefer my backdoors to be
| NSA backdoors), and the US is always just on the cusp of a trade
| war with China.
|
| Edit: typos
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| How about this one:
| https://wiki.makerdiary.com/nrf52840-connectkit/introduction...
|
| Discussed here yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36475144
|
| On further examination, the one thing it doesn't discuss is Wi-
| Fi, although it has 2.4gHz. Well, I'll leave this here in case
| you find it interesting.
| nrp wrote:
| Nordic is certainly heading this direction. They have a WiFi
| 6 companion chip already, and are presumably going to make a
| single package solution at some point:
| https://www.nordicsemi.com/-/media/Software-and-other-
| downlo...
| elromulous wrote:
| Nordic products are generally excellent. But for wifi they
| acquired a company and my understanding is they basically
| slapped their name on and wrapped their sdk around a non-
| nordic solution.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| Check out Espressif P4 and C5. Feel like those two upcoming
| pair of chips is going to compete with Nordics first WiFi
| offering.
|
| Will be interesting to see how low Nordics price point will
| go with their single package solution!
| numpad0 wrote:
| nRF5x family had been the gold standard for Bluetooth Low
| Energy gadgets like coin cell powered smartwatches, to the
| point that _both_ Apple AirTag and its predecessor Tile
| tracker uses nRF52. But they never had Wi-Fi. Just way too
| much power consumption for nRF5x.
| mmoskal wrote:
| NRF52 line is Bluetooth LE not WiFi.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Espressif being a Chinese company, sure, but how many
| components from an _arbitrary NATO-friendly country_ corp but
| are exclusively manufactured in China anyway and get the same
| treatment?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Logically it makes no sense. Legally and politically, it's
| still a concern.
| squarefoot wrote:
| MxChip has something interesting, but yeah, they're Chinese.
| http://mxchip.cc/
|
| There are no non Chinese alternatives, sadly, and even using
| only a Chinese network chip, this wouldn't protect from
| backdoors contained in the network chip firmware itself. I
| wouldn't like my hardware to be filled by backdoors by anyone,
| but if I had to choose, I would always choose backdoors from
| China, if not because I assume they'd be a lot less interested
| in spying me than my own government (that is, I would be to
| them a hop to reach a target, not the target) and also
| backdoors that connect to government addresses in my own
| country would be harder to spot and block compared to those
| connecting to another continent.
|
| In doubt, I would put that stuff behind a dedicated firewall
| anyway, no matter who makes the chips.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| I recently discovered an even cheaper wifi + ble chip that's
| widely used in the Tuya Devices called Beken (they migrated
| away from Espressif it seems). I can't find much info on it
| so guessing Chinese IoT companies have to buy them in bulk.
| They also have an sdk I'm guessing for HomeAssistant users
| called OpenBeken.
|
| https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/02/03/beken-
| bk7256-320-mhz...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Infineon has a line of WiFi chips acquired via Cypress and
| originally developed by Broadcom.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Gotta love that mis-seated power jack on the product's demo
| image.
| Rebellos wrote:
| G f 223
| numpad0 wrote:
| There is nothing confusing here. This is Renesas desperately
| trying to be relevant, wasting on organizational overheads, and
| half-measuring as they always do.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| It's interesting to me that they have both an ESP32 and a RA4M1
| processor. Is the WiFi connectivity really that intensive that
| they need to have both processors? I thought that was
| specifically why the ESP32 was a dual core design. Is the RA4M1
| connected to the IO but not the ESP32? It's interesting also that
| they don't call out how the ESP32 is connected to the RA4M1.
| Depending on what that communication path is, you could be pretty
| limited on the amount of data that gets sent across. Overall,
| interesting board but I don't understand why they have the RA4M1
| and don't just use the ESP32 for everything.
| huslage wrote:
| It feels to me like Arduino is becoming a shill for whatever
| processor companies want to market to people. Not that there's
| anything wrong with the RA4M1 or anything, but Arduino seems like
| they are less focused on ecosystem than they used to be.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >becoming
|
| Didn't that happen years ago when they made boards for chips
| from intel of all people?
|
| (Although, I'm still disappointed the edison didn't take off
| tbh)
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It's more that the Arduino ecosystem is now so well-supported
| and wide ranging that it makes sense to have the association
| with it. e.g., I have an STM32 Discovery board on the table
| next to me that has the standard Uno pinout available in case I
| want to use Arduino shields. For prototyping using the
| ecosystem is insanely fast. In many cases it also makes sense
| for low volume production.
| myself248 wrote:
| Calling this thing UNO is a mistake. It has nothing in common
| with the original Uno (all three revisions) except the form
| factor, and that's going to confuse a lot of people.
| yardie wrote:
| At $27 I can get 4-5 Pi Pico Ws. Between that and the ESP32
| product line this isn't really competitive.
|
| I'll probably get a few just to play around with it. I have so
| many hats and shields at this point it would be a waste not to
| update the MCU.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Arduino gets people into embedded. Its the brand name that uses
| the old name. It helps they have their own IDE and tutorials on
| their website.
|
| Long term, you basically stop using them. Although during
| COVID, I needed some high GPIO boards and there were megas in-
| stock.
| knorker wrote:
| I thought "raspberry pi" is the bigger drawing brand, and the
| pico is for embedded draw.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| This thing has a big LED matrix display and flexible power
| input options, it's not exactly the same market as the pico or
| barebones ESP32 boards. This is much more similar to the
| microbit, circuit playground or similar getting started in
| physical computing boards. Out of the box you can do stuff with
| this board and no other real components.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| If it's Wifi, chances are it'll want a web front-end. That's a
| pig for memory resources and can go on the ESP32 (for which the
| necessary software already exists), letting the other CPU to the
| "Arduino-ish" stuff with the I/Os. Given how much you can do with
| an AVR328, the low-spec core is probably plenty.
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| The Arduino UNO R4 WiFi merges the RA4M1 microprocessor from
| Renesas with the ESP32-S3 from Espressif, creating an all-in-one
| tool for makers with enhanced processing power and a diverse
| array of new peripherals. With its built-in Wi-Fi(r) and
| Bluetooth(r) capabilities, the UNO R4 WiFi enables makers to
| venture into boundless creative possibilities. Furthermore, this
| versatile board boasts a convenient on-board 12x8 LED matrix and
| a Qwiic connector, offering ample space for innovation and
| unleashing creativity. This dynamic combination empowers makers
| to transform their ideas into reality and elevate their projects
| to unprecedented heights.
| adolph wrote:
| That is a weird combo. Up front it looks like the RA4M1 is the
| main compilation target and probably has all the IO. Then you
| have a wifi chip of a different compile target that is faster
| and more capable in the back. Truely this is the mullet of dev
| boards.
|
| RA4M1 [0] 48MHz Arm Cortex-M4F Core 256kB Flash Memory and 32kB
| SRAM
|
| ESP32-S3 [1] dualcore 32bit LX7, up to 240 MHz Flash up to 8
| MB, optional 2 MB PSRAM in chip package 39 GPIOs, rich set of
| peripherals
|
| 0. https://www.mouser.com/new/renesas/renesas-ra4m1-mcu/
|
| 1. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Espressif-
| Systems/ESP32...
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| I concur. I'm not sure why not just buy a ESP32-S3 based
| board...
| adolph wrote:
| Another bad thing about the s3 is no wifi6. The c6 is the
| first esp with it.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| So, it looks like you program the RA4M1, and the ESP32 is just
| there for wifi (and USB interface). That seems like an incredibly
| odd and wasteful choice. I didn't see any explanation as to why
| they did it that way.
|
| I was kinda worried the interface to the ESP32 would have been
| like the origional ESP8266 where you used AT commands. But it
| looks like the Wifi library abstracts out whatever interface
| they're using for the ESP32, so I was at least happy to see that.
|
| Since the ESP32 handles the USB interface, it's probably possible
| to program both microcontrollers. I can't imagine a practical use
| for that, but bet it gets done pretty quick.
| Dork1234 wrote:
| Pretty standard to use ATWINC1500, CYW43439, ESP8266, or ESP32
| to add Wifi over UART/SPI/i2c to another microcontrol chip.
|
| This is done with the RP Pico W, Adafruit Feather M0 Wifi / or
| Airlift, 3d Printer boards (Duet Wifi) and allows you to add
| Wifi to code bases already written for these boards without
| worrying about rewriting and/or hitting memory performance
| issues with running Wifi and logic on a single chip.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| rip lipo packs
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >So, it looks like you program the RA4M1, and the ESP32 is just
| there for wifi (and USB interface). That seems like an
| incredibly odd and wasteful choice.
|
| They don't want to be responsible for security?
|
| I've done this to airgap devices.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| What's the benefit of this RA4M1 processor over something like
| an Arm cortex ? I see the only thing that sticks out to me is
| the 24 volt tolerance?
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| The RA4M1 is an ARM Cortex M4 SoC.
| gh02t wrote:
| The RA4M1 _is_ an ARM Cortex core, but it could be that
| Renesas offered to subsidize some of the cost of the board by
| providing the chips with some kind of sweetheart deal. Not a
| bad idea if so, Renesas can generate a whole lot of interest
| in their platform for what is probably a rounding error in
| their bottom line. And they 've previously invested in
| Arduino (https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/renesas-backs-
| arduino-with-1...).
| edrxty wrote:
| Yeah that was my thought. Renesas Isn't a big player in the
| uc market at all. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone
| using their parts.
| teraflop wrote:
| Back in the day, before being spun off from Hitachi,
| Renesas made the CPU for the original Lego Mindstorms:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H8_Family
| gh02t wrote:
| They're a big deal in industrial/automotive/defense but
| they don't have a ton of visibility. Perhaps why they'd
| be interested in more outreach, Atmel and others like
| STMicro definitely reaped benefits from engaging with
| hobby/educational users at probably negligible cost.
| Arduino has also been trying to position themselves as a
| legitimate friendly platform for industrial automation,
| so it could be a good match.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| i have used renesas microcontrollers in probably 20
| defense contracts fwiw
| fest wrote:
| How open is the toolchain/SDK for Renesas parts? I.e. can
| they be used with gcc/gdb/(c)make with reasonably low
| effort (like esp32, stm32, rp2040) or is the only
| realistic option using their IDE?
| mbanzi wrote:
| it's all open source, you can see part of it here
| https://github.com/arduino/ArduinoCore-renesas
|
| you can use GCC with https://github.com/renesas/fsp if
| you want to go very low level.
| edrxty wrote:
| What defense area? I've done a ton of random aerospace
| stuff and usually end up using STM or NXP. All the
| critical systems have been some horrifying PPC or Sparc
| derivative.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Renesas is (or was, at least) pretty big in the
| automotive sector. They are much less common in general
| consumer electronics, though.
| auxym wrote:
| Personally I'm really stoked about the Uno finally getting
| a 32 bit ARM core. And an M4 at that! I would've thought
| maybe a M0+ (like the RP Pico) on the Uno and perhaps an M4
| on a hypothetical future Mega update.
|
| Good stuff from Arduino. The AVR on the previous Uno revs
| was getting quite outdated. Simple to use yes, but the
| Arduino environment mostly abstracts over that and only
| "power users" ever need to dive into peripheral registers
| and whatnot (eg to use interrupts).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| 5V GPIO is something the Uno line has historically had since
| the very beginning (and an assumption of having it is baked
| into thousands of getting started with Arduino books and
| guides) and I suspect using the RA4M1 is to help keep this
| capability.
| no_time wrote:
| What an odd board. The ESP32-S3 is an absolute powerhouse by
| itself. I really don't see why would you add another (probably
| pricey) MCU to serve as the master.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Honestly, I think it's a good choice; I can absolutely see
| folks running a small web server or something on the ESP32 and
| putting their realtime code on the main MCU, for instance.
| teraflop wrote:
| But the ESP32-S3 is already a dual-core processor.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| I think this depends on how the ICs are connected. If it's
| running something like I2C between them, then your data
| transfer rates will be too low and you'll be quite limited in
| some of the applications.
| hoosieree wrote:
| When I did electronics for a psychology department, nearly
| everything had to have both hard real-time sensing and be
| plug-and-play with Windows and MacOS. We ended up using a lot
| of Arduinos, but having a webserver on board would have been
| so much nicer than serial over USB, or transferring from SD
| cards.
| adolph wrote:
| It is a beast. Here is an example of object detection using the
| old ESP32: ESP32-CAM Object Detection with Edge Impulse
|
| https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-object-detect/
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Somewhat shameless but relevant plug - we use the ESP32-S3 for
| Willow[0]. The dual core S3 and "high speed" external PSRAM are
| game changers.
|
| What it is capable of (especially considering the price point)
| is nothing short of incredible. Wake word activation, audio
| processing (AGC, AEC, etc), audio streaming, even on device
| speech recognition for up to 400 commands with Multinet. All
| remarkably performant, easily besting Alexa/Echo in terms of
| interactivity and response time (even when using an inference
| server across the internet for speech recognition).
|
| Sure we're down in ESP-IDF land and managing everything we have
| going on in FreeRTOS is a pain but that's not anything you
| wouldn't have on any microcontroller. We're also doing a lot
| considering and generally speaking we "just" throw/pin audio
| tasks (with varying priority) on core 1 while more-or-less
| dumping everything else on core 0. Seems to be working well so
| far!
|
| [0] - https://github.com/toverainc/willow
| no_time wrote:
| Wow good luck with your project. Virtual assistants are not
| my thing. But if I were to try again, this would certainly be
| my first choice.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Thanks!
| skykooler wrote:
| Interesting, this is yet another open source project that
| relies on a proprietary wake word model. Why are there no
| open source wake word engines like there are for speech
| recognition?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >another (probably pricey) MCU
|
| The R7FA4M1AB3CFM costs $3.42 at quantity:
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/R7FA4M1AB3CFM%252...
|
| For an Arduino board, voltage and pin compatibility is an
| absolute hard requirement. (The only reason you use Arduino is
| to use Arduino software or existing peripherals/shields) ESP32
| has fewer pins and is a 3.3V part.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| yea I go for the S3 when I need networking on one core while
| still running realtime applications on the other core, but it's
| the priciest one
|
| i would have probably paired a lower cost -C family (maybe the
| RISC one for extra nerd cred) with the arduino, since those
| have only one core, which would have made for a good split
|
| maybe i'll think of a three-core micro project :)
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Modularity and separation of concerns, in hardware.
|
| Historically, you wanted your PIC or 8051 to be in complete
| control of the system. You built the core of your RTOS around
| some well-understood central processor, but farmed out tasks
| like converting text display over an SPI-like interface to
| modulating a 16x2 character LCD, or decoding your UART into USB
| serial to an FTDI chip, or decoding MP3 bitstreams into I2S or
| raw DAC signals, or what have you. SOCs added on-chip
| peripherals for some functions, but a lot of stuff was off-chip
| like in this Arduino.
|
| You wouldn't run code on an FTDI chip, that's an inversion of
| the architecture, and back in the day that was an ASIC that did
| nothing but covert RS232 into USB packets so there was no way
| to run code on it.
|
| The ESP32 is what it is because decoding 802.11 RF signals and
| running a TCP/IP stack is now a task not for an ASIC but a
| generic microcontroller that's fast enough to do those tasks in
| software. The processor is so much more powerful than the
| ancient Atmel Atmega328 in an Arduino Duemilanove that had 32
| KB Flash and 2 KB SRAM on an 8-bit bus at up to a whopping 20
| MHz that it seems ridiculous to do anything at all with such a
| 'master' processor.
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(page generated 2023-06-26 23:01 UTC)