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Professor IoT

Now that I’ve given you a taste last week in our exploration of the Synergy S7G2 microprocessor (MCU) group, I’ll bet you’re ready to extend your palate to another MCU group. I’m here to fill your appetite as we serve up a tasty treat known as the Synergy S3A7 MCU group.

If you’re looking for big-time efficiency in CPU processing power, including very low power consumption to meet the battery-life realities of portable end products, the S3A7 MCU group may be the best fit for you – especially if you also need Flash memory capacity up to 1MB and SRAM up to 192 KB.

The S3A7 MCU group can operate using as little as 1.6V, significantly extending battery life. There’s also an option to operate analog and digital peripherals in special low power modes.

Other cool benefits of using the S3A7 group for power consumption-sensitive applications, include:

  • Minimization of CPU clock cycles during floating point computations and DSP operations, enabled by efficient pre-processing of acquired data before the data is stored or securely transmitted.
  • The ability to use low-cost display glass to address mid-range HMI applications via a built-in segment LCD controller and capacitive touch interface
  • A variety of capabilities that address end-product security, safety, connectivity, system and power management, and timing and control requirements

Check out the below block diagram to better understand the capability of the S3A7 MCU group:

 

I’ve worked with a variety of customers who are using the S3A7 MCU group to support a variety of applications, including water or gas flow meters, smart energy meters and data loggers. 

Let’s consider a water or gas flow meter application. The S3A7 MCU group provides a great value combination: Processing power (48 MHz ARM® Cortex®-M4 with FPU); large internal memory and data flash for data logging plus QSPI for low-cost external flash; segment LCDC for display; 14-bit ADC, 12-bit DAC and 4 OPAMPS for analog sensor measurement; RTC with separate battery back-up power pin, low-power pulse counter operates in battery back-up mode; and self-test safety features.

Developing a data logger app? You can leverage the S3A7 MCU group’s SDHI/QSPI feature, which supports external memory for data logging, as well as high resolution ADCs, DACs, plus OPAMPs and comparators to capture data.

As is the case with every Synergy MCU, the compatibility of the Renesas Synergy MCU portfolio lets me increase or decrease the feature set across a product line. I can re-use significant portions of my development code, thus reducing cost, resource waste and, ultimately, time-to-market.

That’s it for today. Next time we’ll shift from power optimization to power minimization as we explore the newly-launched Synergy S124 MCU group.

Live long and profit!

 

Professor_IoT

  

Hot Tip of the Week

Are you using the IAR Embedded Workbench instead of the e2 studio Integrated Solution Development Environment (ISDE)? Through a special agreement with IAR, Renesas gives you that choice. However, if you want to take advantage of the special capabilities of the Renesas Synergy Project Generator and Project Editor that are integrated into e2 studio ISDE, you need to take an additional step. For IAR users, Renesas has developed a Synergy configuration tool to help you configure your clock, pins, RTOS, SSP Module and Interrupt Control Unit (ICU). Download the Renesas Synergy Configurator (SSC) here.