Happy Monday (I can be sincere in that sentiment today since it is my Spring Break)! This week we are going to mix it up with a pretty unique board from Atmel. I am referring to the SAM4L8 Xplained Pro with the Cortex®-M4 processor. It includes an ATSAM4LC4C microcontroller board that that starts out light-weight on peripherals but can be be extended with the four extension headers to customize without necessarily needing an external breadboard. The starter kit comes with a handful of the "wing" boards but there are additional modules you can purchase to have the board fit your needs. It was fun trying out this board because it's a model I haven't really encountered before and I've seen a few boards at this point! The real question now is how do YOU get your hands on this board?* Comment below (here in the Connected Community) with how you would use this board for a chance to win! The winner will be announced by noon on Friday, April 3, 2015.
Image courtesy of Atmel.com
Hardware
From a design aspect I have needed to take the physical size of the board into account, what voltage supply/ battery pack to purchase, the number of break out pins available for sensors, price and available documentation. These aspects have therefore been noted in case they are important to anyone else’s design.
- Physical dimensions (width x length)
- ~6cm x ~9cm
- CPU specs: Performance, Memory, Power
- Input voltage: 4.3-5.5V
- Operating voltage: 5V
- Flash memory: 256 KB Flash
- RAM: 32 KB of SRAM
- Clock speed: up to 48 MHz
- I/O specs:
- 1x pushbutton
- 1x QTouch button
- 1x LED
- 1x USB interface
- 1x 32.768kHz crystal
- 1x 12MHz crystal
- 4x Xplained Pro extension headers
- 1x segment LCD display
- 1x USART
- 1x TWI
- 4x GPIOs
- 1x Virtual COM port
- I/O1 Xplained Pro
- OLED1 Xplained Pro
- PROTO1 Xplained Pro
- SLCD1 Xplained Pro
- Documentation quality
- Price:
- $109; check out here for ordering one of your own: Atmel Store / Atmel SAM4L Xplained Pro Starter Kit
- What additional hardware do you need to purchase?
- Add-on boards, from ethernet to LCDs can be found here: Atmel Xplained
- Add-on boards, from ethernet to LCDs can be found here: Atmel Xplained
Software
The benchmarking for software was determined by the available IDEs, native languages, time to get started and the like.
- Tutorials (YouTube, main page, etc)
- Time to get Hello World program working
- The Atmel Studio was suggested for developing so I decided to try it. It took some time to download and update the libraries but after that it was fairly smooth. There are a number of sample projects pre-loaded that you can choose from and the IDE automatically recognizes the board plugged in and all of the extension boards. Both of those were very nice features for a quick start up since I didn't have to worry about linking the right libraries and had a reference for the API calls, both of which can shorten the learning curve. The time to get working is therefore more dependent on your internet connection to download than anything else.
- Languages
- C
- C++
- Programming Environments
- Atmel Studio
- IAR™
- GCC-based IDEs including Eclipse
Projects & Community
Whenever you take on a new project it is always nice to see what other people have done. Therefore the last section is dedicated to the resources already available.
- What communities does it have already?
- I am so lost ... | AVR Freaks
- AVRFreaks
- Stack Overflow
- Stack Overflow Help
- Design Support
- Atmel's Design support
- I am so lost ... | AVR Freaks
- What cool projects are out there already
- Mini-Car EMECS-thon 2014 UPT Lift Off! Team - YouTube
- Gaming system EMECS-thon 2014 UoS I see ICs - YouTube
- Voice-controlled robot EMECS-thon 2014 AQU Project Presentations - YouTube
Opinion time:
What I appreciate about the SAM4L8:
I am intrigued by the expansion capabilities of this board- most boards have all of the peripherals there whether you like it or not whereas the Xplained series allows the user to customize it to be whatever you want it to be. This makes the platform a little bit bigger but the wings also mean the Studio automatically recognizes them and you can start prototyping without worry of whether it will work or not. It. just. works. If you need a proof of concept and you don't have a lot of time to get it done then the combination of this platform and the Atmel Studio can get you there!
*Please be aware that if there is an export restriction you may not be eligible to receive the board. Please PM if you have any questions or concerns.
Warning on biases: I am a senior Computer Engineering student with a background in embedded systems. I have worked with a variety of ARM-based boards for projects over the years. I acknowledge that I have my own set of preferences based off of what has worked well in the past but I have tried to be as impartial as possible since not everyone has the same project goals.I am an intern at ARM but these opinions are my own. The donations aren't going to change my opinions- I don't get to personally keep them after the review. Instead they will be here at the ARM office in case any of our awesome Community members has a question that requires more than a dive into the schematics =). Finally, if you have had a different experience I welcome your feedback.