EFM32 Giant Gecko GG11 Starter Kit

Overview

The EFM32 Giant Gecko Starter Kit EFM32GG-STK3701A contains an MCU from the EFM32GG Series 1 family built on an ARM® Cortex®-M4F processor with excellent low power capabilities.

EFM32GG-SLSTK3701A (image courtesy of Silicon Labs)

Hardware

• Advanced Energy Monitoring provides real-time information about the energy consumption of an application or prototype design.

• Ultra low power 128x128 pixel color Memory-LCD

• 2 user buttons, 2 LEDs and a touch slider

• Relative humidity, magnetic Hall Effect and inductive-capacitive metal sensor

• USB interface for Host/Device/OTG

• 32 Mb Quad-SPI Flash memory

• SD card slot

• RJ-45 Ethernet jack

• 2 digital microphones

• On-board Segger J-Link USB debugger

For more information about the EFM32GG11 SoC and EFM32GG-STK3701A board:

• EFM32GG Series 1 Website

• EFM32GG11 Datasheet

• EFM32GG11 Reference Manual

• EFM32GG-STK3701A Website

• EFM32GG-STK3701A User Guide

• EFM32GG-STK3701A Schematics

Supported Features

The efm32gg_stk3701a board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface	Controller	Driver/Component
MPU	on-chip	memory protection unit
COUNTER	on-chip	rtcc
ETHERNET	on-chip	ethernet
FLASH	on-chip	flash memory
GPIO	on-chip	gpio
I2C	on-chip	i2c port-polling
NVIC	on-chip	nested vector interrupt controller
SYSTICK	on-chip	systick
UART	on-chip	serial port-polling; serial port-interrupt

The default configuration can be found in the defconfig file:

boards/arm/efm32gg_stk3701a/efm32gg_stk3701a_defconfig

Other hardware features are currently not supported by the port.

Connections and IOs

The EFM32GG11 SoC has nine GPIO controllers (PORTA to PORTI), all of which are currently enabled for the EFM32GG-STK3701A board.

In the following table, the column Name contains pin names. For example, PE1 means pin number 1 on PORTE, as used in the board’s datasheets and manuals.

Name	Function	Usage
PH10	GPIO	LED0 red
PH11	GPIO	LED0 green
PH12	GPIO	LED0 blue
PH13	GPIO	LED1 red
PH14	GPIO	LED1 green
PH15	GPIO	LED1 blue
PC8	GPIO	Push Button PB0
PC9	GPIO	Push Button PB1
PE1	GPIO	Board Controller Enable EFM_BC_EN
PH4	UART_TX	UART TX Console VCOM_TX US0_TX #4
PH5	UART_RX	UART RX Console VCOM_RX US0_RX #4
PI4	I2C_SDA	SENSOR_I2C_SDA I2C2_SDA #7
PI5	I2C_SCL	SENSOR_I2C_SCL I2C2_SCL #7

System Clock

The EFM32GG11 SoC is configured to use the 50 MHz external oscillator on the board.

Serial Port

The EFM32GG11 SoC has six USARTs, two UARTs and two Low Energy UARTs (LEUART). USART4 is connected to the board controller and is used for the console.

Programming and Debugging

Note

Before using the kit the first time, you should update the J-Link firmware from J-Link-Downloads

Flashing

The EFM32GG-STK3701A includes an J-Link serial and debug adaptor built into the board. The adaptor provides:

• A USB connection to the host computer, which exposes a mass storage device and a USB serial port.

• A serial flash device, which implements the USB flash disk file storage.

• A physical UART connection which is relayed over interface USB serial port.

Flashing an application to EFM32GG-STK3701A

The sample application Hello World is used for this example. Build the Zephyr kernel and application:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b efm32gg_stk3701a samples/hello_world

Connect the EFM32GG-STK3701A to your host computer using the USB port and you should see a USB connection which exposes a mass storage device(STK3701A) and a USB Serial Port. Copy the generated zephyr.bin to the STK3701A drive.

Open a serial terminal (minicom, putty, etc.) with the following settings:

• Speed: 115200

• Data: 8 bits

• Parity: None

• Stop bits: 1

Reset the board and you’ll see the following message on the corresponding serial port terminal session:

Hello World! efm32gg_stk3701a