Advanced Portenta H7 module by Arduino

Arduino has helped introduce thousands (if not millions) of students and aficionados around the globe to the world of microcontrollers. From its very beginning, it has been a tool mainly geared towards education and prototyping – however, the product has “matured” along with its user base to appear in increasingly advanced applications. To meet the growing market expectations, the Italian manufacturer has developed the Arduino PRO line, which combines the ease of use and convenient design with features that cater to the needs of industrial projects.

One of the most advanced modules of the PRO line is the Arduino Portenta H7 model, which could not be missing from the TME catalogue. It is powered by the dual-core STM32H747 CPU that features an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU), 8 MB of SRAM and 16 MB of non-volatile Flash (NOR) memory. The leading assets of the product include extensive communication capabilities: support for Ethernet 10/100 Mb connections, a USB HS (high speed) interface and a built-in Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module. Furthermore, the board features a USB C connector with Display Port support and the SE050C2 crypto chip supplied by NXP.

Such extensive functionalities allow the Arduino Portenta H7 model to perform highly sophisticated tasks. The CPU cores can run in parallel to simultaneously execute the code developed in the Arduino environment, as well as a program created using a high-level language – MicroPython, which has recently received official support from the manufacturer. Thanks to that, the module may be applied in machine learning and other relatively compute-intensive technologies. The Portenta H7 communication capabilities and crypto chip enable rapid implementation of projects that require secure cloud connectivity (e.g. Arduino IoT Cloud). The GPIO has been implemented as standard pin headers, however, the module also features two 80-pin connectors – which increases considerably the functionality of the product. It is also worth noting that the GPU integrated with the CPU has the Chrom-ART graphics engine support (developed by STM), which allows to develop a complex user interface (UI) without overloading the CPU. The functionalities of this accelerator include positioning, scaling and layer merging (with a selective transparency support), conversion between colour formats, antialiasing, and direct memory access (DMA) for bitmap manipulation, among others.

The Arduino Portenta H7 is a great fit for advanced control systems, robotics, vision and measuring systems, PLCs, embedded systems, applications implementing machine learning techniques and in any case where performance is the key factor.

Arduino Portenta H7