FREE Renesas Dev Board

[Armin_Balija]

Yep received mine earlier this week. Fancy little board

[ronwoch]

Please post pictures!!!!

[RABeng224]

Finally received my board. Looks pretty interesting. I wish they used HEW for the IDE because I am used to it but so far it has turned out to be a nice proto board.  I mostly use PIC or MSP430 for low power work but this might weasel its way into my bag O' tricks.

P.S Dave, absolutely love the blog. Listen to it as soon as they are available. However I gotta rag on you for jumpin on the arduino band wagon with your PS project.  I absolutely can see the benefit of arduino for people just learning but I know you could absolutely accomplish this project with out all of the arduino baggage with much better code.

[ronwoch]

Finally got mine today! Woohoo! Recieved an email from digikey the other day saying it had been marked return to sender, but they re-sent  it and it showed up today, pleasantly enough. Hooked it up, played with the demos, gonna continue to check it out.

[codeboy2k]

Finally received my board. Looks pretty interesting. I wish they used HEW for the IDE because I am used to it but so far it has turned out to be a nice proto board.  I mostly use PIC or MSP430 for low power work but this might weasel its way into my bag O' tricks.

I've had mine for a while now, it's a pretty nice little board, yes.  My local Renesas rep also gave me a  RX62N board, the RPBRX62N.  I've just started playing with that one. it's a 32-bit cisc, 512K/32K/96K RAM, 2-USB2.0(12Mbps)  (host or endpoint), 10/100 Ethernet, FPU, MAC, RTC, 6 serial channels, 12-bit ADC x 8 ch, 10-bit DAC,  lots of timers and pulse timers, 4 DMA controllers, SPI, I2C, GPIO, etc. etc. etc.

It's good to get familiar with the Renesas processors, that way when I am looking for a MCU for my next design, I might skip the PIC and Atmels next time.  That's the benefit Renesas sees from the giveaways.

As far as HEW goes, I heard they are moving away from HEW to an Eclipse based development environment. HEW might not be supported going further. I don't know, I'm not authoritative, it's just what I heard.

[westfw]

Actually, Renesas seems to have frequent promotions that involve free development boards.
Good for them; it's a lot better (IMO) than giving away an iPad (or other popular consumer item.)

[T4P]

Actually, Renesas seems to have frequent promotions that involve free development boards.
Good for them; it's a lot better (IMO) than giving away an iPad (or other popular consumer item.)

*sniffsniff* If it was apple giving away , that's decent . ( I hate apple for various reasons anyway )
Renesas wants to give their own stuff away , to boost sales .
ST is not making money from the STM32F4-Disco but they do it to encourage more sales on their chips .

[Guppzor]

I managed to get a RL78/G13 demo board, but for some reason they sent me 2 units... So if anyone else in Australia wants the spare for the price of the postage to get it to you, just let me know.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

I'll have a go with it, if it's still available.
Actually give it to someone else, I'm a bit busy at the moment.

[FreeThinker]

I managed to get a RL78/G13 demo board, but for some reason they sent me 2 units... So if anyone else in Australia wants the spare for the price of the postage to get it to you, just let me know.

Send it to Dave. He loves opening surprise parcels.

[poorchava]

Actually, Renesas seems to have frequent promotions that involve free development boards.
Good for them; it's a lot better (IMO) than giving away an iPad (or other popular consumer item.)

*sniffsniff* If it was apple giving away , that's decent . ( I hate apple for various reasons anyway )
Renesas wants to give their own stuff away , to boost sales .
ST is not making money from the STM32F4-Disco but they do it to encourage more sales on their chips .

True that, a friend of mine received 3 STM32Discovery boards for free at some electronic expo in Germany (although these were STM32F3, because there was no STM32F4 on the market at that time ). In Poland these boards costed something aroung $15

even more extreme example is MSP430 Launchpad. Small devboard with usb debugger suitable for other MSP430 MCUs for $4.30 with priority FedEx shipping. Can't go cheaper I guess (of course $4.30 is a marketing catch, but I'm not complaining). Actually I was thinking about ordering like 10 of those and just integrating them in my designs

[McMonster]

True that, a friend of mine received 3 STM32Discovery boards for free at some electronic expo in Germany (although these were STM32F3, because there was no STM32F4 on the market at that time ). In Poland these boards costed something aroung $15

even more extreme example is MSP430 Launchpad. Small devboard with usb debugger suitable for other MSP430 MCUs for $4.30 with priority FedEx shipping. Can't go cheaper I guess (of course $4.30 is a marketing catch, but I'm not complaining). Actually I was thinking about ordering like 10 of those and just integrating them in my designs

Sad thing about MSP430 micros is that they're really hard to get in this part of the world. No local big distributor carries them, I only know like two places where you can get some of them, but for a high price. Distributors like Digikey or Farnell often have large minimum order values or insane shipping rates to Poland. I've even considered buying 5 or 10 Launchpads just to get the chips.

[TripleFault]

I applied for a free Renesas Dev Board by entering the Elektor/Circuit Cellar competition!
It got approved immediately and took 3 days to ship from US to Australia.
With a list price of $99 US, i am very happy.
It has onboard temp sensor, accelerometer and lots of other goodies.
I am going to be really happy playing with it. 

I forgot to add that they also gave me a 12 month subscription to both Elektor Electronics and Circuit Cellar magazine.... i'm over the moon

[nctnico]

Renesas must be really anxious to get their devices into designs. Does the kit come with a fully functional compiler or just a bit of crippleware? IMHO the succes of ARM is largely due to the fact that excellent development tools are available for free.

[TripleFault]

Renesas must be really anxious to get their devices into designs. Does the kit come with a fully functional compiler or just a bit of crippleware? IMHO the succes of ARM is largely due to the fact that excellent development tools are available for free.

Hey nctnico,
Yes it comes with the full Renasas Design Suite and the IAR IDE (Assembler + Compiler).
There is a DVD that comes with the Dev kit that has all the Data Sheets and Manuals and the Starter for Renasas Design Suite (Full version for IAR IDE).
Yes, they teamed up with 16 manufacturers to deliver that board, so they must be very eager!

[Bored@Work]

Renesas must be really anxious to get their devices into designs.

They are the market leader for some years now, and still are, even after they had been hit by the Japanese earthquake.  http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4238438/Despite-challenges--Renesas-still-dominant-in-MCUs I don't think they are anxious. Someone at Renesas just has a marketing budget to spend and doesn't know better.

[kd7eir]

I also received the RL78/G13 RDK and a free one year subscription to both Elektor and Circuit Cellar.  This is the best deal I have ever gotten without spending a penny!

This is a VERY SWEET setup!

For me, this is my next step from the Arduino.

[nctnico]

Renesas must be really anxious to get their devices into designs.

They are the market leader for some years now, and still are, even after they had been hit by the Japanese earthquake.  http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4238438/Despite-challenges--Renesas-still-dominant-in-MCUs I don't think they are anxious. Someone at Renesas just has a marketing budget to spend and doesn't know better.

AFAIK Renesas' products are more expensive than their competitors and development tools are much less common than for ARM devices. Over here Renesas (Hitachi) used to be popular (mostly because distributors gave away 'free' copies of IAR's software). Another problem is that you need to sign an NDA and buy an expensive programmer to use the code read protection in Renesas' devices. All in all Renesas has lost most of the market over here and new designers only know about ARM. That puts Renesas in a really bad spot. They may look good in revenue but I bet the picture looks entirely different when comparing number of chips sold. From what I read in this thread it seems Renesas already gave up on Europe!

[johnmx]

Renesas is also giving away the Demo Kit for RX62N.

Promotion open to United States, Canada and Mexico.

Again, no Europe...baaaahh!!!

http://am.renesas.com/products/tools/introductory_evaluation_tools/renesas_demo_kits/yrdkrx62n/index.jsp?campaign=top_rdkrx62n