Arduino OPTA

Overview

The Arduino™ Opta® is a secure micro Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) with Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities.

Developed in partnership with Finder®, this device supports both the Arduino programming language and standard IEC-61131-3 PLC programming languages, such as Ladder Diagram (LD), Sequential Function Chart (SFC), Function Block Diagram (FBD), Structured Text (ST), and Instruction List (IL), making it an ideal device for automation engineers.

For Zephyr RTOS, both cores are supported. It is also possible to run only on the M4 making the M7 run the PLC tasks while the M4 core under Zephyr acts as a coprocessor.

Additionally, the device features:

  • Ethernet compliant with IEEE802.3-2002

  • 16MB QSPI Flash

  • 4 x green color status LEDs

  • 1 x green or red led over the reset push-button

  • 1 x blue led over the user push-button (Opta Advanced only)

  • 1 x user push-button

  • 1 x reset push-button accessible via pinhole

  • 8 x analog inputs

  • 4 x isolated relay outputs

ARDUINO-OPTA

More information about the board can be found at the ARDUINO-OPTA website. More information about STM32H747XIH6 can be found here:

Supported Features

The arduino_opta/stm32h747xx/m7 board target supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

NVIC

on-chip

nested vector interrupt controller

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

FLASH

on-chip

flash memory

RNG

on-chip

True Random number generator

IPM

on-chip

virtual mailbox based on HSEM

USB

on-board

usb-fs

ETHERNET

on-board

eth

The arduino_opta/stm32h747xx/m4 board target supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

NVIC

on-chip

nested vector interrupt controller

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

FLASH

on-chip

flash memory

RNG

on-chip

True Random number generator

IPM

on-chip

virtual mailbox based on HSEM

Other hardware features are not yet supported on Zephyr porting.

The default configuration per core can be found in the defconfig files: boards/arduino/opta/arduino_opta_stm32h747xx_m4_defconfig and boards/arduino/opta/arduino_opta_stm32h747xx_m7_defconfig.

Pin Mapping

Both the M7 and M4 cores have access to the 9 GPIO controllers. These controllers are responsible for pin muxing, input/output, pull-up, etc.

For more details please refer to ARDUINO-OPTA website.

Default Zephyr Peripheral Mapping

  • Status LED1: PI0

  • Status LED2: PI1

  • Status LED3: PI3

  • Status LED4: PH15

  • Green “reset” LED: PH12

  • Red “reset” LED: PH11

  • Blue LED: PE5

  • User button: PE4

  • Input 1 : PA0

  • Input 2 : PC2

  • Input 3 : PF12

  • Input 4 : PB0

  • Input 5 : PF10

  • Input 6 : PF8

  • Input 7 : PF6

  • Input 8 : PF4

  • Relay 1: PI6

  • Relay 2: PI5

  • Relay 3: PI7

  • Relay 4: PI4

System Clock

The STM32H747I System Clock can be driven by an internal or external oscillator, as well as by the main PLL clock. By default, the CPU2 (Cortex-M4) System clock is driven at 240MHz. PLL clock is fed by a 25MHz high speed external clock. The M7 clock is driven at 400MHz.

Resources sharing

The dual core nature of STM32H747 SoC requires sharing HW resources between the two cores. This is done in 3 ways:

  • Compilation: Clock configuration is only accessible to M7 core. M4 core only has access to bus clock activation and deactivation.

  • Static pre-compilation assignment: Peripherals such as a UART are assigned in devicetree before compilation. The user must ensure peripherals are not assigned to both cores at the same time.

  • Run time protection: Interrupt-controller and GPIO configurations could be accessed by both cores at run time. Accesses are protected by a hardware semaphore to avoid potential concurrent access issues.

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the arduino_opta use the regular Zephyr build commands. See Building an Application for more information about application builds.

Flashing

Flashing operation will depend on the target to be flashed and the SoC option bytes configuration. The OPTA has a DFU capable bootloader which can be accessed by connecting the device to the USB, and then pressing the RESET button shortly twice, the RESET-LED on the board will fade indicating the board is in bootloader mode.

By default:

  • CPU1 (Cortex-M7) boot address is set to 0x08040000

  • CPU2 (Cortex-M4) boot address is set to 0x08180000

Zephyr flash configuration has been set to be compatible with the “Flash split: 1.5MB M7 + 0.5MB M4” option in the Arduino IDE. The flash is partitioned as follows:

  • 0x08000000-0x0803FFFF (256k) Arduino MCUboot-derived bootloader

  • 0x08040000-0x080FFFFF (768k) M7 application

  • 0x08180000-0x081FFFFF (512k) M4 application

Flashing an application to ARDUINO OPTA M7

First, connect the device to your host computer using the USB port to prepare it for flashing. Then build and flash your application.

Here is an example for the Blinky application on M7 core.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b arduino_opta/stm32h747xx/m7 samples/basic/blinky
west flash

Flashing an application to ARDUINO OPTA M4

First, connect the device to your host computer using the USB port to prepare it for flashing. Then build and flash your application.

Here is an example for the Blinky application on M4 core.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b arduino_opta/stm32h747xx/m4 samples/basic/blinky
west flash

Starting the application on the ARDUINO OPTA M4

If you also flashed an application to M7 the M4 processor is started at boot. If not you will need to start the processor from an Arduino sketch.

Make sure the option bytes are set to prevent the M4 from auto-starting, and that the M7 side starts the M4 at the correct Flash address.

This can be done by selecting in the Arduino IDE’s “Tools” / “Flash Split” menu the “1.5MB M7 + 0.5MB M4” option, and loading a sketch that contains at least the following code:

#include <RPC.h>

void setup() {
    RPC.begin();
}

void loop() { }

Debugging

The debug port does not have an easy access but it is possible to open the case and solder a standard 10-pin SWD connector to the board. After that both flashing and debugging are available via ST-LINK (M7 core only).