Ultra-Low Power RA2L1 MCU Group with Advanced Capacitive Touch Sensing for Cost-Effective, Energy Efficient IoT Node HMI Applications

3 December 2020 - 0 Comments

RA2L1 Microcontroller from Renesas Electronics

The RA Family of Renesas Electronics corporations now has 66 MCUs after the release of the 20 new 32-Bit RA2 Series Microcontrollers (MCUs). The new RA2L1 MCUs are built with Arm Cortex-M23 core operating up to 48 MHz come with several integrated features like ultra-low power consumption, capacitive touch sensing for various home appliances, industrial and building automation, medical and healthcare, and consumer human-machine-interface (HMI) IoT applications.

The additional features of these new MCUs include embedded flash memory densities up to 256 KB, SRAM at 32 KB, analog, communications, and timing peripherals, and safety and security functions. The RA2L1 MCUs are certified with an EEMBC ULPMark score of 304 at 1.8V because of superior power rating, hence the user can reduce the power consumption close to the standby level eventually extend the battery life.

The advanced capacitive touch IP of the RA2L1 MCUs provides enhanced operability for a variety of touch and touchless system implementations and these can sense through acrylic or glass panels more than 10 mm thick and implement proximity sensing (and) 3D gestures, this makes them suitable for household equipment.

The RA2L1 series offers an IEC60730 self-test library and feature integrated safety functions that allow the users to perform MCU self-diagnostics. The MCUs also include an AES cryptography accelerator, a true random number generator (TRNG), and memory protection units that provide the fundamental blocks to develop a secure IoT system. The Flexible Software Package (FSP) of the MCUs allows the customers to re-use their legacy code and combine it with software from partners across the vast Arm ecosystem to speed implementation of complex connectivity and security functions.

Features of RA2L1 MCUs

48MHz Arm Cortex-M23
128kB/256kB Flash Memory and 32kB SRAM with ECC
8kB Data Flash to store data as in EEPROM
Scalable from 48-pin to 100-pin packages
Internal voltage regulators
Enhanced Capacitive Touch Sensing Unit (CTSU2)
12-bit ADC, 12-bit DAC, LPACMP
32-bit general PWM timer, 16-bit general PWM timer, low power asynchronous general-purpose timer

Note: More technical information can be found in the RA2L1 Group datasheet linked at the bottom of this page and on the RA2L1 MCUs product page.