Silicon Labs SLSTK3701A starter kit

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When using this board with RIOT, set the BOARD variable to slstk3701a in your Makefile. If you follow the standard RIOT project structure, your Makefile should look like this:

# name of your application
APPLICATION = hello-world

# Change this to your board if you want to build for a different board
BOARD ?= slstk3701a

# This has to be the absolute path to the RIOT base directory:
RIOTBASE ?= $(CURDIR)/RIOT

include $(RIOTBASE)/Makefile.include

Support for Silicon Labs SLSTK3701A starter kit

Overview

Silicon Labs EFM32 Giant Gecko GG11 Starter Kit is equipped with the EFM32 microcontroller. It is specifically designed for low-power applications, having energy-saving peripherals, different energy modes and short wake-up times.

The starter kit is equipped with an Advanced Energy Monitor. This allows you to actively measure the power consumption of your hardware and code, in real-time.

Hardware

MCU

MCU	EFM32GG11B820F2048GL192
Family	ARM Cortex-M4F
Vendor	Silicon Labs
Vendor Family	EFM32 Giant Gecko 11B
RAM	512.0 KiB
Flash	2048.0 KiB
EEPROM	no
Frequency	up to 50 MHz
FPU	yes
MPU	yes
DMA	24 channels
Timers	4 x 32-bit + 7 x 16-bit + 1 x 16-bit (low power)
ADCs	2 x 12-bit ADC (1 Msample/s)
DACs	2 x 12-bit VDAC (500 ksamples/s), 1 x IDAC
I2Cs	3 x
SPIs	4 x USART
UARTs	4 x USART, 1 x LEUART
USB	1 x Low Energy Full-Speed USB 2.0
Ethernet	Ethernet MAC 10/100 Mbps
Vcc	1.85 V - 3.8 V
Datasheet	Datasheet
Manual	Manual
Board Manual	Board Manual
Board Schematic	Can be downloaded using Silicon Labs’ Simplicity Studio

Pinout

This is the pinout of the expansion header on the right side of the board. PIN 1 is the bottom-left contact when the header faces you horizontally.

RIOT Peripheral	Name	PIN	PIN	Name	RIOT Peripheral
	3V3	20	19	ID SDA
	5V	18	17	ID SCL
I2C_DEV(0):SDA	PC0	16	15	PC1	I2C_DEV(0):SCL
UART_DEV(1):RX	PE9	14	13	PB9
UART_DEV(1):TX	PE8	12	11	PB11	DAC_LINE(0)
	PE13	10	9	PC5	I2C_DEV(1):SCL
SPI_DEV(0):CLK	PE12	8	7	PC4	I2C_DEV(1):SDA
SPI_DEV(0):MISO	PE11	6	5	PA13
SPI_DEV(0):MOSI	PE10	4	3	PA12
	VMCU	2	1	GND

Note: not all starter kits by Silicon Labs share the same pinout!

Note: some pins are connected to the board controller, when enabled!

Peripheral mapping

Peripheral	Number	Hardware	Pins	Comments
ADC	0	ADC0:CH0		Internal temperature
ADC	1	ADC0:CH1		AVDD
DAC	0	DAC0:OUT0	PB11	AVVD as reference voltage
I2C	0	I2C0	SDA:PC0, SCL:PC1	Normal speed
I2C	1	I2C1	SDA:PC4, SCL:PC5	Normal speed
I2C	2	I2C2	SDA:PI4, SCL:PI5	Normal speed, Sensor I2C bus
HWCRYPTO	-	-		AES128/AES256, SHA1, SHA224/SHA256
HWRNG	-	TNRG0		True Random Number Generator (TRNG)
RTT	-	RTCC		1 Hz interval, either RTT or RTC
RTC	-	RTCC		1 Hz interval, either RTT or RTC
SPI	0	USART0	MOSI:PE10, MISO:PE11, CLK:PE12
SPI	1	USART1	MOSI:PA14, MISO:PC2, CLK:PC15	Memory LCD
Timer	0	WTIMER0 + WTIMER1		WTIMER0 is used as prescaler
Timer	1	TIMER0 + TIMER1		TIMER0 is used as prescaler
Timer	2	LETIMER0
UART	0	USART4	RX:PH5, TX:PH4	Default STDIO
UART	1	USART5	RX:PE9, TX:PE8

User interface

Peripheral	Mapped to	Pin	Comments
Button	PB0_PIN	PC8
	PB1_PIN	PC9
LED	LED0R_PIN	PH10	Active low
	LED0G_PIN	PH11	Active low
	LED0B_PIN	PH12	Active low
	LED1R_PIN	PH13	Active low
	LED1G_PIN	PH14	Active low
	LED1B_PIN	PH15	Active low
	LED0_PIN	LED0R_PIN	Active low
	LED1_PIN	LED1R_PIN	Active low

Implementation Status

Device	ID	Supported	Comments
MCU	EFM32GG11B	yes	Power modes supported
Low-level driver	ADC	yes
	DAC	yes	VDAC, IDAC is not supported
	Ethernet	no
	Flash	yes
	GPIO	yes	Interrupts are shared across pins (see ref manual)
	HW Crypto	yes
	I2C	yes
	PWM	yes
	RTCC	yes	As RTT or RTC
	SPI	yes	Only master mode
	Timer	yes
	TRNG	yes	True Random Number Generator
	UART	yes	USART is shared with SPI. LEUART baud rate limited
	USB	yes	Device mode
LCD driver	LS013B7DH06	no	Sharp Low Power Memory color LCD (Rev. A0 - A5 board)
LCD driver	LPM013M126A	no	JDI Low Power Memory color LCD (Rev. B0+ boards)
Temperature + humidity sensor	Si7021	yes	Silicon Labs Temperature + Humidity sensor

Board configuration

Board controller

The starter kit is equipped with a Board Controller. This controller provides a virtual serial port. The board controller is enabled via a GPIO pin.

By default, this pin is enabled. You can disable the board controller module by passing DISABLE_MODULE=silabs_bc to the make command.

Note: to use the virtual serial port, ensure you have the latest board controller firmware installed.

Note: the board controller always configures the virtual serial port at 115200 baud with 8 bits, no parity and one stop bit. This also means that it expects data from the MCU with the same settings.

Advanced Energy Monitor

This development kit has an Advanced Energy Monitor. It can be connected to the Simplicity Studio development software.

This development kit can measure energy consumption and correlate this with the code. It allows you to measure energy consumption on code-level.

The board controller is responsible for measuring energy consumption. For real-time code correlation, the CoreDebug peripheral will be configured to output MCU register data and interrupt data via the SWO port.

By default, this feature is enabled. It can be disabled by passing DISABLE_MODULE=silabs_aem to the make command.

Note that Simplicity Studio requires debug symbols to correlate code. RIOT-OS defaults to GDB debug symbols, but Simplicity Studio requires DWARF-2 debug symbols (-gdwarf-2 for GCC).

Clock selection

There are several clock sources that are available for the different peripherals. You are advised to read AN0004.0 to get familiar with the different clocks.

Source	Internal	Speed	Comments
HFRCO	Yes	19 MHz	Enabled during startup, changeable
HFXO	No	50 MHz
LFRCO	Yes	32.768 kHz
LFXO	No	32.768 kHz
ULFRCO	No	1 kHz	Not very reliable as a time source

The sources can be used to clock following branches:

Branch	Sources	Comments
HF	HFRCO, HFXO	Core, peripherals
LFA	LFRCO, LFXO	Low-power timers
LFB	LFRCO, LFXO, CORELEDIV2	Low-power UART
LFE	LFRCO, LFXO	Real-time Clock and Calendar

CORELEDIV2 is a source that depends on the clock source that powers the core. It is divided by 2 or 4 to not exceed maximum clock frequencies (EMLIB takes care of this).

The frequencies mentioned in the tables above are specific for this starter kit.

It is important that the clock speeds are known to the code, for proper calculations of speeds and baud rates. If the HFXO or LFXO are different from the speeds above, ensure to pass EFM32_HFXO_FREQ=freq_in_hz and EFM32_LFXO_FREQ=freq_in_hz to your compiler.

You can override the branch’s clock source by adding CLOCK_LFA=source to your compiler defines, e.g. CLOCK_LFA=cmuSelect_LFRCO.

Low-power peripherals

The low-power UART is capable of providing an UART peripheral using a low-speed clock. When the LFB clock source is the LFRCO or LFXO, it can still be used in EM2. However, this limits the baud rate to 9600 baud. If a higher baud rate is desired, set the clock source to CORELEDIV2.

Note: peripheral mappings in your board definitions will not be affected by this setting. Ensure you do not refer to any low-power peripherals.

RTC or RTT

RIOT-OS has support for Real-Time Tickers and Real-Time Clocks.

However, this board MCU family has support for a 32-bit Real-Time Clock and Calendar, which can be configured in ticker mode or calendar mode. Therefore, only one of both peripherals can be enabled at the same time.

Configured at 1 Hz interval, the RTCC will overflow each 136 years.

Hardware crypto

This MCU is equipped with a hardware-accelerated crypto peripheral that can speed up AES128, AES256, SHA1, SHA256 and several other cryptographic computations.

A peripheral driver interface is proposed, but not yet implemented.

Usage of EMLIB

This port makes uses of EMLIB by Silicon Labs to abstract peripheral registers. While some overhead is to be expected, it ensures proper setup of devices, provides chip errata and simplifies development. The exact overhead depends on the application and peripheral usage, but the largest overhead is expected during peripheral setup. A lot of read/write/get/set methods are implemented as inline methods or macros (which have no overhead).

Another advantage of EMLIB are the included assertions. These assertions ensure that peripherals are used properly. To enable this, pass DEBUG_EFM to your compiler.

Pin locations

The EFM32 platform supports peripherals to be mapped to different pins (predefined locations). The definitions in periph_conf.h mostly consist of a location number and the actual pins. The actual pins are required to configure the pins via GPIO driver, while the location is used to map the peripheral to these pins.

In other words, these definitions must match. Refer to the data sheet for more information.

This MCU has extended pin mapping support. Each pin of a peripheral can be connected separately to one of the predefined pins for that peripheral.

Flashing the device

The board provides a on-board SEGGER J-Link debugger through the micro USB board so that flashing and debugging is very easy.

Flashing is supported by RIOT-OS using the command below:

make flash

To run the GDB debugger, use the command:

make debug

Or, to connect with your own debugger:

make debug-server

Some boards have (limited) support for emulation, which can be started with:

make emulate

Supported Toolchains

For using the Silicon Labs SLSTK3701A starter kit we strongly recommend the usage of the GNU Tools for ARM Embedded Processors toolchain.

License information

Silicon Labs’ EMLIB: zlib-style license (permits distribution of source).