Rensas RL78/G13 Promotion Board

Well, I got my Rensas promotion board today, so Im excited to see what features it can provide me, and if it can fit into my project. Great thing is, I made the sample request yesterday, and they sent it with 1-day shipping. You better get one while this lasts, even if you dont have a need for it, its free!

The features according to the RENSAS Website: 

• World’s leading low power performance for equivalent MCUs in its class 
• Scalability of line-up, including smart pin layout 
• System cost saving features 
• Wide voltage operation 
• Wide temperature operation 
• Built-in safety features

The RL78 MCUs‘ innovative “Snooze“ mode achieves ultra-low power by allowing ADC operation and serial communication, all while the CPU is turned off. This makes the RL78 MCUs best in class for low power applications.

Darlington Transistor Arrays

After a bumpy period in my personal life, I am back on this project. Its going to be a bit slow over the next few weeks due to Ramadan, but I feel like I am excited to get the project back on track.

The relay board did get assembled, but after finding a fault in the circuit design, Im having to fix it and make another revision. I have to say though, Im glad I came across this post on Adafruit about the ULN2003 Darlington Array, because that part (in its DIP or SMD packages) should allow me to shrink the dimensions of the relay board. 

Also, if you're interested, RENSAS is offering a free promotion board for their new RL78 chip, to those who are willing to provide some information on the project it will be used in. They describe, “The YRPBRL78G13 is a promotion board for the new Renesas RL78 microcontroller family. It supports on-board debugging, flash programming, and is pre-programmed to work with the GUI provided on the included DVD to demonstrate the low-power capabilities of the Renesas RL78 MCU.”<via DangerousPrototypes >