e2 studio with the RA8M1 Feather SoM for getting Started with The.

Choosing the right hardware and development tools are essential for success in this fast-growing field of robotics, as robots become increasingly integrated into our daily lives demand for versatile, powerful and easy to use software platforms continue.

For many reasons, the RA8M1 Feather Boardis is an excellent choice for your next robotics project. The heart of this core is its powerful Arm® Cortex®-M85 core that provides computational power and support for complex robotic applications; although it has been designed to be compact, there is still a small form factor incompatible with all projects from miniature drones to larger robotic systems.

A full set of tutorials have been written to help you harness the potential of this board. We’ll first guide you through your development environment with the Renesas e2 studio IoT connectivity and even Edge Machine Learning; The series ends in an interesting Robotic Dog project, where you will use all these skills in one impressive build.

The RA8M1 Feather SoM will give you the knowledge to implement your ideas using this series — for those who are new in robotics, or someone that is an experienced maker looking to expand their toolkit.

We will walk you through the process of setting up and getting started with the RA8 Feather SoM in this first tutorial, which is used to run a basic blink app (and communicate via UART over USB).

The powerful RA8M1 microcontroller from Renesas is integrated into the board, which uses the high performance of 64-bit Arm® Cortex®–M85 CPU core with an average frequency of 480 MHz to achieve the full potential of real-time operating system.’ The Feather Board has 128Mb Flash memory (GPIOs (analog and digital), I2C/I3C; SPI communication pins) that are classic features of this type: “FeatHER Board”

RA8 Feather SoM pinout

RA8 Feather SoM connectors, reset button & user LED

Installing Renesas e² studio IDE

Renesas’ e2 studio IDE (renesia) is an integrated, user-friendly platform designed to simplify embedded application development; it supports ReNESaS microcontrollers such as the RA8M1, and integrates powerful features with an intuitive interface for coding, debugging and project management.

https://www.renesas.com/us/en/software-tool/e2studio-information-ra-family> First of all, download the new version of the Flexible Software Package with the e2-video platform installer from the following link.

After installation, the installer will guide you through the steps required.’ When it is completed, launch Renesas e2 studio and set up your workspace (the directory where all of your projects will be stored).

You will also need to install the J-Link Software pack from here.

In the case of a PC (see below: Connect the Feather board to your PC via the USB-C cable), connect the J-Link debugger’s ribbon cable to the RA8M1 FeATher, and connect that micro-USB cable with the other end to you PC.

Running the Blink project

Next up, download the Blink sample from here.

In e2 studio, File -> Open Projectsfrom File System is used to select Archive and browse the project you just downloaded then click Fiinish::

If you import your project, open the configuration.xml file to access the board configurator. Let’s review some key settings that will be relevant for all of your future RA8 Feather Board projects. First of all, in the BSP* tab, your product should have the *Custom User Board* and the selected device (*R7FA8M1AFECFP).

In the Pins tab, you’ll notice that pin configuration for our board – ZALMOTEK_RA8M1.pincfg. You may also adjust this to fit with your future projects (based on what peripherals you want to enable) Pins are inputs or outputs and can be adjusted according to P115 which is connected to their current drive capacity; in addition, LED is attached to its set up in the PIN Selection* menu ->

To run the project, you can Generate Project Content and Debug* it. In this prompt that pops up, choose Dbug as RenesaS GDB Hardware Debugging. Click the Resume icon to start executing: Reset the board and now the USR LED should be blinking (see below).

Paraphraser: If you would like to access the J-Link RTT terminal for the SEGGER’s J–Link RT interface, you must download the RTC Viewer (link: https://www.segger.com/downloads/jlink/) For that, open the application and configure it according to the model below.

Running the UART project

UART is a good debugging tool because it allows real-time monitoring and communication of system status and error messages. Next we’ll use uart over USB firmware sample to communicate with our board.

Like we did in e2 studio, download the USB UART sample from here. File -> Open Projects from File System select Archive and browse to the project you just downloaded (click*Finish*) then debug the work as well as run it on its own?

A. ‘lsusb’ command is used to check USB devices connected to your PC. The Feather board should now be listed as ‘Hitachi, Ltd CDC USB Demonstration’ and then connect to the port of this Feathr board with Picocom at 9600 baud rate. You will receive the following messages from your board:

The Project Explorer goes to the src folder in your project if you want it to adjust the printed messages, open hal_entry.c.” You’ll have to update line 53 when this is done on its own behalf.

Flashing the firmware using JFlash Lite

The Motorola’s SREC file format was designed to simplify the deployment of programs as binary information in hexadecimal values (without having to compile and prepare the source files in an IDE) A way to flash the firmware without e2 studio is to use the J-Flash Lite tool. To do so, select the device as R7FA8M1AF, choose the SWD interface; set the speed at 4000 kHz: you can find the necessary .srec file for flashing in Debug folder of deft

RA8M1 Feather SoM: Congratulations on your first project with the RAF8 M1! If you want to know more about the next tutorials in this series:.

• Robotics Sensors with the Renesas RA8M1 Feather SoM
• Controlling Outputs with the Renesas RA8M1 Feather SoM
• Connectivity and Remote Control in Robotics with the RA8 Feather SoM
• Edge ML with the RA8 Feather SoM
• RA8 Feather SoM-Powered Robotic Dog