Combined IDE drives HMI and camera development
A new design environment for Renesas Electronics’ RZ/A1 microprocessors simplified and accelerates the development of human machine interface (HMI), camera and graphic user interface (GUI)-based applications, such as industrial equipment, building controls, home automation, medical devices, white goods, and video surveillance and video/fingerprint based access control.
The RZ/A1 software package, the integrated design environment (IDE) reduces the complexity and resources required to develop these applications. The RZ/A1 software package incorporates familiar characteristics of the microcontroller design environment to migrate to a complex microprocessor design environment.
Mark Rootz, senior director of industrial marketing division, Industrial Solutions Business Unit, Renesas Electronics, explains that the IDE allows designers to combine the capabilities of microprocessors with the ease of use of microcontrollers.
Renesas’ RZ/A1 microprocessors feature the ease of use of Renesas microcontrollers along with up to 10Mbyte of on-chip SRAM, a built-in memory management unit, and a powerful Arm Cortex-A9 core. This combination allows engineers to keep the application design process simple and fast, while they take advantage of computational and HMI capabilities of high-speed microprocessors, says Renesas.
The design environment is pre-integrated with the RZ/A1 microprocessors. The RZ/A1 software package is an integrated software package that includes a real-time operating system (RTOS), drivers, middleware, and sample applications for camera-GUI-display implementation. Software components included are a software development kit providing consistent support for camera input, LCD output, and image adjustment. QE for Display and QE for Camera tools allow camera/display adjustments to be configured graphically with real-time feedback. Other components include seamless integration with the TES Guiliani GUI framework enabling designers to create GUIs for embedded systems within minutes.
Software engineers working with streaming applications, such as IP-based video and radio streams, as well as video surveillance and video/fingerprint-based access control, can use the RZ/A1 Software Package together with the Renesas RZ development kit to further reduce development times. The evaluation and development platform allows engineers to begin their specific code development almost immediately after installing the project and opening the tool suite, says Renesas.
In addition to the software quick start, the RZ/A1 microprocessors and the RZ/A1 Software Package offer a streamlined PCB layout with quad flat packaging (QFP) and easy power and clock design, as well as a familiar debugging and development experience for designers migrating from microcontroller to microprocessor environments. XIP (Execute-in-Place) Linux with QSPI flash memory allows the RZ/A1 Series to add microcontroller-like boot-up times to the microprocessor-level performance.
The hardware integration enables customers to spin up their custom designs quickly, minimize implementation errors and other design risks, eliminate the need for external DRAM, deliver boot up response times similar to microcontrollers, and reduce overall bill-of-materials costs.
The RZ/A1 Software Package is compatible with the IAR System IAR Embedded Workbench, as well as with Renesas’ e² studio Eclipse-based development environment.
The RZ/A1 Software Package is available now pre-integrated with the RZ/A1 microprocessors and is also available for use with the RZ development kit.
