A Cortex M4 Based Platform With ETH, USB, BT And Many On-board Peripherals

Here is a very time consuming project that I worked on during last summer: an ARM Cortex M4 based platform with plenty of communication interfaces and on-board peripherals. The particular project for which this board has been developed is not really HaD material (one of my father’s funny ideas) so I’ll only describe the platform itself. The microcontroller used in the project is the ATSAM4E16C from Atmel, which has 1Mbyte of flash and 128Kbytes of SRAM. It integrates an Ethernet MAC, a USB 2.0 Full-speed controller, a sophisticated Analog to Digital Converter and a Digital to Analog Converter (among others).

Here is a list of the different components present on the board so you can get a better idea of what the platform can do: a microphone with its amplifier, a capacitive touch sensor, two unipolar stepper motors controllers, two mosfets, a microSD card connector, a Bluetooth to serial bridge, a linear motor controller and finally a battery retainer for backup power. You can have a look at a simple demonstration video I made, embedded after the break. The firmware was made in C and uses the Atmel Software Framework. The project is obviously open hardware (Kicad) and open software.

If you’re interested in one platform and don’t want spending many hours soldering it, I even made a profitless fundraiser (even though I need a better camera and a better accent!).

8 thoughts on “A Cortex M4 Based Platform With ETH, USB, BT And Many On-board Peripherals

  1. “not really HaD material” – Oh come on, don’t leave us hanging like that! Now I obviously want to know. Especially as I can’t imagine it *not* being a fancy hack.
    And your accent is just fine, it is the content that is important!

    1. **Just a guess**

      He’s going to put those capacitive wires in a rubber hand, with an LED marquee above it saying “Pull my finger” and when you grab the finger, it will play a fart noise, use the steppers as rumble motors, and fan some stench at you.

      Not sure how that isn’t HAD material, though.

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