Arduino UNO R4 coming shortly

Hmm. An interesting development indeed. Still 5V, but the loss of AVR doesn't feel like Uno to me ...

But perhaps a good move overall ... I wonder how it stacks up to the SAMD-family that has been running MKR-series of boards.

- Gough

Yes this is a curious addition to the Arduino family. The spec isn't ground breaking but it is very sturdy for Arduino-type applications. I see clock speed is set at 48MHz, with 32kB of SRAM and 256kB of flash. There are two interesting offerings. First, is that the board has a power regulator that can handle with 24V, which they say has an improved thermal design. Cool. And the second is that it provides a CAN bus. Also cool. I suspect this product will suit industrial applications quite well.

Looks good! I might actually want to finally use an Uno!

However this could be a bit of a pain, unless VCC can be changed to 3.3V, otherwise level shifters will be needed with 3.3V logic.

Granted lots of industrial interface chips still use 5V, but it would be nice to also support 3.3V in some way for at least a few GPIO, e.g. a few level converters on-board. Still, looks like I2C will work at 3.3V according to the table below (unless Arduino has I2C resistors on-board, I don't know if Arduino boards do that or not; anyway it's not hard to desolder them, lets hope they are not 0201 silliness, if this is an industrial-targeted board).

One great thing with Renesas is the always almost OTT level of documentation, it's a 1400-page extremely detailed reference manual : ) 

Neat. What's also great to see is they are continuing to invest in the arduino library catalog

I assume one of the things they strove for was backwards compatibility with all the shields out there, as well as existing projects.   For a lot of people, the biggest "win" will be the memory increases opening up a lot more extended feature possibilities.  It would have been useful to provide a 3.3V option though.  The R3 Uno definitely didn't have on-board I2C resistors.

Nice upgrade. I personally prefer the Nano packaging, hope these new features migrate there. 

If you want a smaller form factor, the Portenta C33 (ARM Cortex M33) might fit the bill. And if you need more horsepower, the GIGA R1 (Arm Cortex M7 + M4) is a beast. Both would seem to be 3.3V I/O.

Yes the board will have two different version with the WiFi version containing ESP32-S3 module which is pretty rich in features. It has upto 16MB of flash memory option(dont know which one Arduino-R4 will have) but surely that will add lots of features in addition to Renesas MCU.

It will also have CAN bus controller integrated for those who are specifically missing this feature for automation projects.

Also if you are a library owner or a maintainer than you can apply for free board which you can use to port your library and then submit it. Great chance for open-source contributions.

You've got me trawling through the Renesas RA4M1 spec now...

Spotted this... I will be curious to see how the Arduino R4 handles all these analogue capabilities the chipset offers:

• has both a 14-bit A/D Converter (ADC14) and a 12-bit D/A Converter (DAC12)
• has 2 x 8-bit D/A Converters (DAC8)
• has 2 x Low-Power Analog Comparators
• and 4 x Operational Amplifiers

Hmm. Well the analogReadResolution() call already exists, and did hint at choosing higher values for some "forward compatibility". LSBs will be padded with zeroes where the hardware is not capable of the requested resolution.

I guess analogWrite() can be real analog rather than PWM now too ...

As for the others ... I suppose they'll roll out the new functions assuming they're available and hooked up. Or else, like some more advanced features, people will have to access ports directly and twiddle bits to get the desired outcomes.

- Gough