FREE Renesas Dev Board

[RABeng224]

Hey guys, just wanted to let everyone know that Renesas is giving away a free dev board.  Here is the link if you interested.  I haven't played around with their new RL series so this looks like a good way to start.

http://am.renesas.com/products/tools/introductory_evaluation_tools/renesas_demo_kits/yrpbrl78g13/yrpbrl78g13.jsp?campaign=110823Update06

[ElektroQuark]

Europe excluded from the promotion.

[Nermash]

Fail...

[8086]

...because there's no EEs in Europe, right?

[Bored@Work]

...because there's no EEs in Europe, right?

Maybe Renesas learned a thing or two from the last giveway. A lot of freeloaders who had no real use for it applied for a rather expensive board and got angry when their local customs was charging them import tax based on the official, manufacturer suggested price.

There is even a thread here on eevblog, where you can see a few of them shitting their pants.

[AlphZeta]

Anyone has received the board? I registered but haven't heard anything back yet...

[kripton2035]

...because there's no EEs in Europe, right?

Maybe Renesas learned a thing or two from the last giveway. A lot of freeloaders who had no real use for it applied for a rather expensive board and got angry when their local customs was charging them import tax based on the official, manufacturer suggested price.

There is even a thread here on eevblog, where you can see a few of them shitting their pants.

it is not the board that was expensive... but the heavy documentation they could have sent on cd ( or even pdf...)
the book was declared at $250 on the custom sheet, and so I had some EUR 50 to pay for customs on a book I didnt really order...
anyway the card is nice ...

[codeboy2k]

I registered, but haven't received it yet.

[buffalo960]

They sent me an email saying they wouldnt give one to me

[slateraptor]

Submitted a request on the 26th with no indication of whether I'd be receiving one.

[codeboy2k]

I registered, but haven't received it yet.

Update- I received my dev board the other day..

So, to those of you who were approved and are still waiting, it should come any day now.

[slateraptor]

Update- I received my dev board the other day..

So, to those of you who were approved and are still waiting, it should come any day now.

When you say "approved" did you receive an e-mail explicitly saying to expect one in the mail? Or was it just the e-mail saying that they've received your application?

[codeboy2k]

Update- I received my dev board the other day..

So, to those of you who were approved and are still waiting, it should come any day now.

When you say "approved" did you receive an e-mail explicitly saying to expect one in the mail? Or was it just the e-mail saying that they've received your application?

ok, more specifically, I first got the auto-generated email that my application was received. About 30 days later I got another email that I was approved to receive it.  Then 5 days later I got a
third email saying that it was shipped and they gave me the fedex tracking number. I got it a couple days later.

That's the process I saw.

Cheers!

[slateraptor]

For the record, I've been officially denied. Renesas is henceforth permanently stricken from my list of possible microcontroller vendors.

Dear ---,
Thank you for registering for the free Renesas RL78 Promotion Board This email is automatically generated, so please do not reply to this message. We are sorry that we are unable to fulfill your request for a free kit. Instead, we invite you to join our University program.

[bombledmonk]

Here's a second link for free boards.  I'm not sure if it's part of the same promotion.  It is still US only.
http://www.digikey.com/product-highlights/us/en/renesas-rx-family/230

[slateraptor]

Here's a second link for free boards.  I'm not sure if it's part of the same promotion.  It is still US only.
http://www.digikey.com/product-highlights/us/en/renesas-rx-family/230

Count me out...

Renesas is henceforth permanently stricken from my list of possible microcontroller vendors.

[westfw]

Huh.  Submitted my request back at the end of september, got an immediate "confirmation of request" and didn't hear anything else till dec-9, when I got an "approved" email.  Then I receive the board yesterday...

[westfw]

So I've been studying the datasheet for the rl78 to learn more about using my eval board...

• this is a descendant of the z80; it even has an HL register.  NEC (before becoming part of Renesas) used to make actual Z80s, IIRC, and the famous V20 (8088 compatible) had z80 emulation mode.  I guess they're still doing it.
• It reminds me of 70s era microprocessors, and not in a good way.  A true CISC microcontroller, with extended address spaces tacked on with duct tape and chewing gum.  All the ugliness of a PIC14 architecture, and none of the simplicity.  icky!
• The datasheets are awful.  Worse than TI's.  There are translation issues, but those aren't the only things that make them awful.  (they MIGHT be better if you were already familiar with the previous generations of NEC z80-like chips and were just trying to learn the specific of the RL78 line.)
• I don't like the assembler syntax either.  "!x" is a 16bit address, and "!!x" is a 20bit address.  Unless it's "$" and "$!" instead.  Not to be confused with "#", which is an immediate value...  Occasional bits of x86 syntax are in there as well (for based indexed addressing.)  The SFR names are awful.

I suppose that these are chips that one is supposed to choose based on excellence of semiconductor implementation (speed, low-power, density, etc) and peripheral features, rather than the elegance of the basic architecture.  But...  Sigh.

[slateraptor]

The datasheets are awful.  Worse than TI's.

Worse than TI datasheets?! Blasphemy!!

[Berni]

Looks like Renesas is really keen on getting popular as i saw quite a few give aways from them and i did get a devboard from then quite a few years ago. And til now i haven't made anything using it (Well it did have next to no IO brought out) But yeah i stopped going for these freebie devboards and such since i know im not going to make anything useful out of it. Why figure out all the hidden quirks of some new micro and figure out the IDE and all that when i can just grab a PIC and get going straight away.

I did once get a freebie devboard from microchip and i was exited to see how the capacitive sensing on it works, turned out it didn't work at all, what a bummer.

[Greg J]

They should start giving them away in europe too.
There's tons of EE labs and manufacturers in europe. For instance, a lot of TVs and STBs are still manufactured in likes of Poland and region. So its not only china!
And the amount of R&D in the UK.
They gotta be shitting me for not sending it to the UK !

[Bored@Work]

They should start giving them away in europe too.

Renesas, like many companies these days, divide the world into regions, allocating resources, like managers and marking budgets to those regions. These days Europe is typically lumped into a region abbreviated as EMEA. That is short for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

That tells you a lot about how uninteresting Europe is for large companies these days. A low-volume area not worth to exclusively allocate resources to. A area that can be handle like the Middle East and Africa in one go, an also-ran. Companies don't allocate much marketing budget to it, and don't care much about it.

[Short Circuit]

They should start giving them away in europe too.

That tells you a lot about how uninteresting Europe is for large companies these days. A low-volume area not worth to exclusively allocate resources to. A area that can be handle like the Middle East and Africa in one go, an also-ran. Companies don't allocate much marketing budget to it, and don't care much about it.

I think you get it a bit wrong; it tells how uninteresting ME & africa are. Just like how uninteresting middle & south americas are for the 'americas' division. Lot of design and pretty much all specification (including component selection) is being done here in Europe, or USA, Canada. Ok, and a little bit Australia

A possibile explanation for such regional actions is that companies typically want steady growt. So if europe & asia have expanded already to the target, but US/CA not, then this could be a reason for a regional promotion.

[AlphZeta]

Wow, I almost forgot about it till yesterday.... I just received a confirmation email saying that it will be shipped to me in a few weeks. It took a good two months for them to review the requests? Anyway, for those who haven't been rejected it may come to you soon as well!

[ronwoch]

Hahaha, I did forget about it till the 12th, when I got the email from digi-key. It almost looked like spam at first, nearly deleted it. If gmail didn't display the first line of the email with 'give away from digi-key' I probably would have. Anyway, should have it in another week? We'll see.

[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