RoadTest: RA2L1 EVK(Ultra-Low Power 48MHz Arm® Cortex®-M23)
Author: misaz
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Development Boards & Tools
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: STM32F429ZI Discovery, STM32 NUCLEO-L552ZE, Cypress PSoC 62 Wi-Fi BT Pioneer Kit, Arduino Nano 33 BLE SENSE
What were the biggest problems encountered?: none
Detailed Review:
I welcome you to my review about Renesas EK-RA2L1 Development Kit. This review mainly describes development board and microcontroller present on this board. Following picture shows board.
Due to length, I split my review to multiple blog posts. The main parts of this review are present in blog posts Review of Renesas EK-RA2L1 Development Kit and Review of Renesas RA2L1 Microcontroller. Blog post Review of Renesas EK-RA2L1 Development Kit describe development board, its structure, connectors, jumpers, onboard debugger. It also describes documentation and demonstration software related to development board. Blog post do not describe main chip of the board – RA2L1 MCU because it is described in detail in blog post Review of Renesas RA2L1 Microcontroller. Blog post Review of Renesas RA2L1 Microcontroller contains description of Renesas RA ecosystem, MCU subsystems, peripherals and safety features. Finally, it contains description of documentation and software related to microcontroller. Except two blog posts described above, there are one tutorial which is split to two parts. Tutorial describes Renesas Flexible Software Package (FSP) concept and demonstrate developing application that read temperature using I2C temperature sensor and show output on display. It also features DMA controller for transferring display buffer to the display at background. Tutorial is available at first part and second part. Following table of contents contains links to all blog post described in this paragraph.
After more than 2 months of reviewing this board I think it is good board featuring interesting microcontroller. Microcontroller is limited in many aspects but have lot of interesting peripherals fully compatible with higher microcontrollers in RA family. Provided development environment is advanced, powerful and easy to use. Peripheral drivers are easy to use but support only limited set of peripheral features. I am giving following RoadTest score.
Product Performed to Expectations: 4/5 because peripheral drivers do not support advanced features of peripherals. Otherwise, both MCU and Board performed well.
Specifications were sufficient to design with 5/5 because of high quality documentation and availability of demonstration projects.
Demo Software was of good quality 5/5 because of high quality of demonstration projects available to download from board webpage.
Product was easy to use 5/5 mainly because of smart design, very useful onboard labels and many other features simplifying board usage and application development.
Support materials were available 5/5 because documentation and examples are available, and they are very high quality.
The price to performance ratio was good 3.5/5 because kit is overpriced.
