circuitpython/ports/renesas-ra

The Renesas RA port

This is a port of MicroPython to the Renesas RA family of microcontrollers. Currently supported features are:

• Filesystem on the internal flash using FatFs.
• time module with sleep, time, and ticks functions.
• os module with VFS support.
• machine module with the following classes: Pin, ADC, PWM, DAC, I2C, SPI, SoftI2C, SoftSPI, UART, RTC, SDCard.
• sdcard module for MCUs without native machine.SDCard support.

Currently supported board product names are:

• EK-RA6M2
• RA4M1 CLICKER
• EK-RA6M1
• EK-RA4M1
• EK-RA4W1

Please refer to the quick reference of renesas-ra port for more information about the boards.

Build instructions

• MicroPython cross-compier The MicroPython cross-compiler must be built first, which will be used to pre-compile (freeze) built-in Python code. THis cross-compiler is built and run on the host machine, using:

  $ make -C mpy-cross
  

  This command should be executed from the root directory of this repository. All other commands below should be executed from the ports/renesas-ra/ directory.

• Arm compiler An Arm compiler is required for the build, along with the associated binary utilities. The default compiler is arm-none-eabi-gcc, which is available for Linux, Mac and Windows hosts via https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/arm-gnu-toolchain-downloads. The compiler can be changed using the CROSS_COMPILE variable when invoking make.

• Protocol buffer compiler Building for the ARDUINO_PORTENTA_C33 board will build the esp_hosted driver, that depends on the Protocol Buffer Compiler being installed. On Debian/Ubuntu, this can be installed with sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler.

• Obtain submodules First the submodules must be obtained using:

  $ make submodules
  

• Build binary image .hex Then to build for a given board subdirectory name, run:

  $ make BOARD=EK_RA6M2 clean
  $ make BOARD=EK_RA6M2
  

  The default board subdirectory name is EK_RA6M2 (which is for EK-RA6M2 board) but any of the names of the subdirectories in the boards/ directory can be passed as the argument to BOARD=; for example RA4M1_CLICKER, EK_RA4M1, EK_RA4W1 and EK_RA6M1. The above command should produce binary images firmware.hex in the build-EK_RA6M2/` subdirectory (or the equivalent directory for the board specified).

Board definition auto-generated code

The supported board definitions contain auto-generated configuration files in the boards/<BOARD_NAME>/ra_cfg and boards/<BOARD_NAME>/ra_gen folders.

These are generated with the RA Smart Configurator tool which is used to define peripheral configuration, pinouts, interrupts etc. for each board.

This tool can be installed either as part of the "Renesas e² studio", or separately with the fsp driver package from https://github.com/renesas/fsp/releases eg.

• setup_fsp_v4_4_0_rasc_v2023-04.exe
• setup_fsp_v4_4_0_rasc_v2023-04.exe

This tool can be used to create new board definitions or modify existing ones by opening one of the configuration.xml files in the board folders.

Once the configuration.xml file is opened in RA Smart Configurator and modified as needed, the "Generate Project Content" button can be pressed to export new copies of the ra_cfg and ra_gen folders.

Supported/Unsupported functions

Please refer to the renesas-ra quick reference.

Known issues

all boards

• machine.lightsleep(time_ms) and machine.deepsleep(time_ms) raise uncaught exceptions.

  machine.deepsleep(1000) Uncaught exception in ExtInt interrupt handler line 16 TypeError:

RA4M1-CLICKER

• mpremote: mount command is not available due to limited memory resources.

EK-RA4M1

• mpremote: mount command is not available due to limited memory resources.

EK-RA4W1

• mpremote: "Execution: timeout waiting for remote" error happens when importing a file on /remote.