Arduino Giga R1 WiFi
James Lewis of element14 presents introduces the Arduino Giga
Overview of the Arduino Giga
The Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi is designed for ambitious makers who want to step up their game. It levels the playing field for gamers, artists, sound designers and anyone coming to the tech world with big ideas on a budget – because it packs advanced features into an accessible component, with the same form factor as our popular Mega and Due.
Let’s break down all the powerful features of this board.
Microcontroller (STM32H747XI): This dual core 32-bits microcontroller allows you have two brain talking to each other (a Cortex®-M7 at 480 MHz and a Cortex®-M4 at 240 MHz) you can even run micropython in one and Arduino in the other.
Wireless communication (Murata 1DX): Whether you prefer Wi-Fi® or Bluetooth®, the GIGA R1 WiFi got you covered. You can even quickly connect to the Arduino IoT Cloud and keep track of your project remotely. And if you are concerned about the security of the communication, the ATECC608A keeps everything under control.
Hardware ports and communication: Following the legacy of the Arduino Mega and the Arduino Due, the GIGA R1 WiFi has 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), 3 I2C ports (1 more than its predecessors), 2 SPI ports (1 more than its predecessors), 1 FDCAN.
GPIOs and extra pins: We wanted to keep the same form factor of the Mega and the Due, so you can easily adapt your custom made shields to the GIGA R1 WiFi (remember this board works at 3.3V though!) and we added extra headers to access extra pins, leaving the total count to 76 GPIO pins, and the best part, you can access them from underneath, so keep your project as it is and just think on how to expand it. Also, we added two new pins: a VRTC so you can connect a battery to keep the RTC running while the board is off and an OFF pin so you can shut down the board.
Features
This board has:
- USB-A connector suitable for hosting USB sticks, other mass storage devices and HID devices such as keyboard or mouse.
- 3.5mm input-output jack connected to DAC0, DAC1 and A7.
- USB-C® to power and program the board, as well as simulate an HID device such as mouse or keyboard.
- Jtag connector, 2x5 1.27mm.
- 20 pin Arducam camera connector.
- 75 I/O Pins
- Allows you to connect multiple sensors and actuators without additional shields
- Ideal for Intermediate or Advanced makers using 3D printers and/or Machines or interactive installations with many sensors and actuator.
- Audio Processing
- High performance microcontroller provides fidelity to sound related projects + input/output jack + 2 DAC channels + 2 inputs for digital microphones
- Ideal for makers involved in analog synthesizer music or audio processing. It can be used for Synths; DSP, filtering, effects; and Recording & playback
- Advanced analog input capabilities
- Advanced makers can use high resolution analog inputs with OpAmp for lab equipment measurements
- Use USB-C or USB-A port to connect HID or mass storage
- Allows permanent storage of large quantities of data and the use keyboards or other USB devices as input
- Computer Vision
- Arducam-compatible pinout header making it ideal for computer vision projects
- Parallel Processing
- Powerful dual-core STM32H7 microcontroller + Remote Procedure Call mechanisms allows you to run user interface and real-time operations simultaneously on different cores
- Machine Learning
- TinyML compatible. Use the camera capabilities to train models and use them in the project
- Time keeping during power failure
Higher voltage support: In comparison with its predecessors that support up to 12 volts, the GIGA R1 WiFi can handle a range of 6 to 24 volts.