IZITRON has developed a series of compact modules and baseboards that are open-hardware STM32 development boards. These modules come with M.2 connectors and are being crowdfunded at Crowd Supply. Furthermore, the series consists of three different ARM cortex boards including M0, M4 and M7 models. Besides, these models are known as IZIRUNF0, IZIRUNF4, IZIRUNF7 and there’s an additional baseboard IZIGOBOARD that helps in external interfacing.
IZIRUNF0 For IoT
Costing about $30, the IZIRUNF0 is based on ARM Cortex-M0 (STM32F030CCT6). It has various peripherals like EEPROM flash, SRAM, NOR flash, LEDs, buttons, an external crystal, and a debug connector. All of these make IZIRUNF0 suitable for low-power applications and IoT projects. This compact board speeds up development and has an M.2 connector footprint with about 67 pins. This is in utilization for communication with external peripherals such as I²C, SPI, UART and CAN. Working on a maximum frequency of 48MHz, this module had four ADCs, 32kB RAM, 256kB Flash and 23 GPIOs.
IZIRUNF4 For Motor Control & Connectivity
IZIRUNF4 is IZIRUN’s model designed for applications such as motor control, Ethernet connectivity, displays, CAN control, etc. The board costs about $45 and has been designed for mid-range applications. Further, it supports various external peripherals through the M.2 connector with 67 pins. These external peripherals include I²C, SPI, UART and CAN. Also, the board has built-in peripherals like the EEPROM flash, SRAM, NOR flash, LEDs, buttons, an external crystal, and a debug connector. IZIRUNF4 works on a frequency of 168MHz and has a RAM of 192kB. In addition, there are 43 GPIOs and four ADCs for interfacing.
IZIRUNF7 For Multimedia
The module works on a frequency of 216MHz and has a RAM of 532kB. Designed for multimedia applications, IZIRUNF7 has 2D graphics acceleration, sound, Ethernet connectivity, etc. Besides, it costs $60 and has built-in peripherals like SRAM, EEPROM flash, NOR flash, buttons, an external crystal, LEDs, and a debug connector. IZIRUNF7 supports external peripherals I²C, SPI, CAN, and UART using an M.2 connector footprint, with 67 pins. Apart from this, two ADCs and 43 GPIOs are in use for interfacing the module with external peripherals.
IZIGOBOARD
IZIGOBOARD is a $50 module that acts as a baseboard for IZIRUNF0, IZIRUNF4, and IZIRUNF7 MCU modules. Just like most boards, IZIGOBOARD also uses a MicroUSB connector for power and communication purposes. The baseboard also provides USB OTG connectors and RJ45 Ethernet.
Operating System
The IZIRUN boards utilize a real-time operating system LittleKernel (LK). “LK is used in Android bootloaders and in Fuchsia OS, which relies on the LK-based Zircon message-passing kernel.” Further, LittleKernel is a lightweight and mature operating system that has a small memory footprint supporting primitives like mutexes, threads, and timers. “With only a few KB, you can run an interactive console that includes built-in commands capable of displaying information about the system, showing free memory, enumerating running threads, etc.” claims IZITRON.
One can back this project at the CrowdSupply site. IZITRON plans to ship the boards by October 2021. Also, these 35 mm x 35mm boards will be available through Crowd Supply and Mouser Electronics. The source for pictures and technical details is the official product page. You can visit the same for more details.
Sanskriti Sawant is a student of Electronics and Telecommunication engineering. She is passionate about Computer architecture, VLSI and plans to major in them. She is working on HDL languages and FPGA’s.
