Week4 - Group Assignment

Task of group assignemnt

Demonstrate and compare the toolchains and development workflows for available embedded architectures

Which microcontroller should I choose?

We asked Deepseek for recommanded Microcontroller.

We need to choose a main chip that has Wi-Fi, a camera, and a display.

We got the following recommanations:

ESP32-S3
ESP32-CAM
Raspberry Pi Pico W
Raspberry Pi Zero2 W
ESP32-S2
ESP-EYE
NVIDIA Jetson Nano
STM32H747I-DISCO

Some of the Microcontrollers are sold by Seeed Studio, I will find the XIAO series.

Specification of Seeed Studio XIAO series

I asked Deepseek to help me find out all the specfications of Seeed Studio XIAO series, with the following propmt.

Help me list the specs of all the boards in the Seeed Studio XIAO series, including cpu frequency, ram flash size, etc. Present it in table form

Here’s a table summarizing the specifications of the boards in the Seeed Studio XIAO series, including CPU frequency, RAM, flash size, and other key features:

Model	CPU	CPU Frequency	RAM	Flash Size	Wireless	GPIO	Analog Inputs	USB Interface	Other Features
XIAO SAMD21	ARM Cortex-M0+ (SAMD21)	48 MHz	32 KB	256 KB	None	14	11	USB-C	I2C, SPI, UART, DAC
XIAO nRF52840	ARM Cortex-M4 (nRF52840)	64 MHz	256 KB	1 MB	Bluetooth 5.0	14	6	USB-C	BLE, NFC, I2C, SPI, UART
XIAO RP2040	Dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ (RP2040)	133 MHz	264 KB	2 MB	None	11	4	USB-C	PIO, I2C, SPI, UART, PWM
XIAO ESP32C3	RISC-V (ESP32-C3)	160 MHz	400 KB	4 MB	Wi-Fi, BLE 5.0	11	4	USB-C	Wi-Fi, BLE, I2C, SPI, UART
XIAO ESP32S3	Xtensa Dual-Core (ESP32-S3)	240 MHz	512 KB	8 MB	Wi-Fi, BLE 5.0	14	9	USB-C	Wi-Fi, BLE, I2C, SPI, UART, Camera I/F
XIAO BLE Sense	ARM Cortex-M4 (nRF52840)	64 MHz	256 KB	1 MB	Bluetooth 5.0	14	6	USB-C	BLE, NFC, I2C, SPI, UART, IMU, PDM Mic
XIAO BLE Sense (nRF52840)	ARM Cortex-M4 (nRF52840)	64 MHz	256 KB	1 MB	Bluetooth 5.0	14	6	USB-C	BLE, NFC, I2C, SPI, UART, IMU, PDM Mic
XIAO BLE Sense (ESP32C3)	RISC-V (ESP32-C3)	160 MHz	400 KB	4 MB	Wi-Fi, BLE 5.0	11	4	USB-C	Wi-Fi, BLE, I2C, SPI, UART, IMU, PDM Mic

Notes:

GPIO: The number of general-purpose input/output pins available.
Analog Inputs: The number of analog input pins.
USB Interface: All XIAO boards feature a USB-C connector.
Wireless: Includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or BLE capabilities where applicable.
Other Features: Additional peripherals or interfaces like I2C, SPI, UART, DAC, PIO, etc.

Then, we choose RP2040 & ESP32C3 as our chooses for whole of our Fab Academy journey.

About RP2040

Here's the datasheets and documentations about RP2040 Microcontroller.

The Specifcation:

Dual ARM Cortex-M0+ @ 133MHz
264kB on-chip SRAM in six independent banks
Support for up to 16MB of off-chip Flash memory via dedicated QSPI bus
DMA controller
Fully-connected AHB crossbar
Interpolator and integer divider peripherals
On-chip programmable LDO to generate core voltage
2 on-chip PLLs to generate USB and core clocks
30 GPIO pins, 4 of which can be used as analogue inputs
Peripherals
- 2 UARTs
- 2 SPI controllers
- 2 I2C controllers
- 16 PWM channels
- USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support
- 8 PIO state machines

RP2040 has a dual M0+ processor cores, DMA, internal memory and peripheral blocks connected via AHB/APB bus fabric.

Code may be executed directly from external memory through a dedicated SPI, DSPI or QSPI interface. A small cache improves performance for typical applications.
Debug is available via the SWD interface.
Internal SRAM is arranged in banks which can contain code or data and is accessed via dedicated AHB bus fabric connections, allowing bus masters to access separate bus slaves without being stalled.
DMA bus masters are available to offload repetitive data transfer tasks from the processors.
GPIO pins can be driven directly, or from a variety of dedicated logic functions.
Dedicated hardware for fixed functions such as SPI, I2C, UART.
Flexible configurable PIO controllers can be used to provide a wide variety of IO functions.
A USB controller with embedded PHY can be used to provide FS/LS Host or Device connectivity under software control.
Four ADC inputs which are shared with GPIO pins.
Two PLLs to provide a fixed 48MHz clock for USB or ADC, and a flexible system clock up to 133MHz.
An internal Voltage Regulator to supply the core voltage so the end product only needs supply the IO voltage.

About RISC-V Microcontroller (ESP32-C3)

Here's the datasheets and documentations about ESP32-C3 Microcontroller.

The Specification:

Low-power SoC equipped with RISC-V 32-bit single-core processor, up to 160MHz main frequency
Supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth® 5 (LE)
400KB of SRAM and 384KB ROM, and 4MB of onboard Flash memory
Castellated module and onboard ceramic antenna, allows soldering direct to carrier boards
Supports flexible clock, module power supply independent setting, and other controls to realize low power consumption in different scenarios
Integrated with USB serial port full-speed controller, 15 × GPIO pins allows flexibly configuring pin functions
3 × SPI, 1 × I2C, 2 × UART, 1 × I2S, 2 × ADC, etc.

Comparion

Item	Processor	Wireless Connectivity	Memory	Interfaces	PWM/Analog Pins	Onboard Buttons	Onboard LEDS	Battery Charge Chip	Programming Languages
Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3	ESP32-C3 32-bit RISC-V @160MHz	WiFi and Bluetooth 5 (BLE)	400KB SRAM, 4MB onboard Flash	I2C/UART/SPI	11/4	Reset/ Boot Button	Charge LED	Built-in	Arduino/MicroPython
Seeed Studio RP2040	RP2040 Dual-core M0+@133Mhz	N/A	264KB SRAM 2MB onboard Flash	I2C/UART/SPI	11/4	Reset/ Boot Button	Full-color RGB/ 3-in-one LED	N/A	Arduino/ MicroPython/ CircuitPython

In Processor, ESP32C3 is faster than RP2040. In memory, memory of ESP32C3 is larger than RP2040's. They can be also programmed with Arduino, MicroPython. We will compare the toolchains with Arduino & MicroPython.

Then, we compare the toolchains and development workflows for available embedded architectures.

Task of group assignemnt​

Which microcontroller should I choose?​

Specification of Seeed Studio XIAO series​

About RP2040​

About RISC-V Microcontroller (ESP32-C3)​

Comparion​