Renesas a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions has announced the expansion of its 32-bit RA2 Series microcontrollers (MCUs) with 20 new RA2L1 Group MCUs. The general-purpose RA2L1 MCUs use the Arm® Cortex®-M23 core operating up to 48 MHz and are supported by the easy-to-use Flexible Software Package (FSP) and Renesas’ partner ecosystem, which offers software and hardware building block solutions that work out-of-the-box. The ultra-low power and innovative touch interface of the RA2L1 MCUs make them ideal for home appliance, industrial and building automation, medical and healthcare, and consumer human-machine-interface (HMI) IoT applications.
The RA2L1 MCUs have been designed for ultra-low power consumption, with several integrated features to lower BOM costs, including capacitive touch sensing, embedded flash memory densities up to 256 KB, SRAM at 32 KB, analog, communications, and timing peripherals, and safety and security functions. In many battery-powered applications, the MCU spends most of the time in a low-power standby mode waiting for an internal or external event to wake-up the CPU and process data, make decisions and communicate with other system components. When benchmarked for power consumption, the RA2L1 MCU was certified with an EEMBC® ULPMark™ score of 304 at 1.8V, verifying its best-in-class power rating. Users can now minimize power consumption close to the standby levels to extend battery life.
The RA2L1 MCUs feature advanced capacitive touch IP providing enhanced operability for a variety of touch and touchless system implementations. For example, it supports sensing through acrylic or glass panels more than 10 mm thick, which is enough for use in household equipment with thick doors or partitions. It also implements proximity sensing (hovering) and 3D gestures to accommodate applications with hygiene or safety limitations. The RA2L1’s capacitive touch noise tolerance meets the requirements of IEC EN61000-4-3 level 4 (radiated) and EN61000-4-6 level 3 (conducted) to assure reliable operation with minimal sensing errors.
RA2L1 Block Diagram
The RA2L1 MCUs also offer an IEC60730 self-test library and feature integrated safety functions that provide confirmation of normal operation. Designers can easily use these safety functions to perform MCU self-diagnostics. In addition, the RA2L1 includes an AES cryptography accelerator, true random number generator (TRNG) and memory protection units that provide the fundamental blocks to develop a secure IoT system.
Click below to see a brief overview of the RA2L1 key features
The RA2L1 MCUs with Flexible Software Package (FSP) allows engineers to re-use their legacy code and combine it with software from partners across the vast Arm ecosystem to speed implementation of complex connectivity and security functions. The FSP includes FreeRTOS and middleware, offering a premium device-to-cloud option for developers. These out-of-box options can be easily replaced and expanded with any other RTOS or middleware.
The FSP also includes a best-in-class HAL driver, as part of the FSP, and provides a host of efficiency enhancing tools for developing projects targeting the RA2L1 MCUs. The e2 studio Integrated Development Environment provides a familiar development cockpit from which the key steps of project creation, module selection and configuration, code development, code generation, and debugging are all managed. The FSP uses a GUI to simplify the process and dramatically accelerate the development process, while also making it easy for customers to transition from an original 8/16-bit MCU design.
Evaluation Kits
To help designers explore the full capability of the RA2L1 including the integrated capacitive touch IP, Renesas have introduced two evaluation kits. The first of these is the EK-RA2L1 evaluation kit which enables users to effortlessly evaluate the features of the RA2L1 MCU Group, develop embedded systems applications using Renesas' Flexible Software Package (FSP) and the e2 studio IDE plus utilize rich on-board features along with your choice of popular ecosystem add-ons to bring your big ideas to life. The EK-RA2L1 board comes pre-programmed with a Quick Start example project (source code provided in the EK-RA2L1 example project bundle).
The second kit is a dedicated capacitive touch evaluation system which makes it easy for users to evaluate touch solutions offered by Renesas by enabling an out of the box evaluation experience using the board and software included in each kit. The included capacitive touch board allows evaluation of capacitive buttons, wheel and slider configurations.
Anglia are offering customers a FREE evaluation board and samples of the RA2L1 Ultra-Low Power MCU from Renesas, please fill in the form below to register your interest now.
FREE samples for UK and Ireland customers only, subject to availability.
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