Recently, Sony released a microcontroller named Spresense. Mainly consisting of 6 boards in this Sony microcontroller ecosystem, this will have a significant impact on other microcontroller manufacturers like Arduino and Espressif. They said they will officially release the first batch of Sony microcontrollers on the 28th of July in 2023.
The main key advantages are multi-core (6 CORE) processors (ARM CORTEX-M4Fx6), built-in GPS capability with ultra-low power consumption, and support for multiple GNSS systems. It also features high-quality audio sampling at 192kHz/24bit with 4 analog or 6 digital microphone inputs. Additionally, it boasts 1.5MB SRAM, which is larger than most microcontroller SRAMs like the ESP32. If machine learning models need to be implemented, it is recommended to go up to 1MB in size.
One interesting aspect of the Sony microcontroller ecosystem is the availability of attachable boards. Two camera boards have been released, which can be used for object detection and computer vision projects.
The board names are as follows: Spresense main board, Spresense extension board, Spresense camera board, Spresense HDR camera board, Spresense LTE extension board, and Spresense GNSS add-on board. The main board can be attached to extension boards. Spresense is primarily based on NuttX RTOS, but it also supports Arduino. Arduino libraries are available for this Sony microcontroller.
Also, they support third-party environments mainly Edge Impulse and then Zerynth, MicroEJ.
This is the pin diagram of the Spresense main board
Actually, you have all the communication interfaces like I2C, I2S, and USART. Another interesting part is that you have two 1.8V power pins.
Pin diagram for Spresense extension board
You can see that this Spresense extension board looks like Arduino Uno. The analog pins also resemble Arduino Uno. The fun fact is that the Spresense extension board measures 68.6 mm x 53.3 mm, while Arduino Uno measures 68.6 mm x 53.4 mm. Despite the slight difference in size, there are many advantages to using the Spresense extension board. One significant advantage is the inclusion of an SD card slot.
The SDK of Spresense
- Support IoT protocols (MQTT, AWS IoT, LwM2M).
- Support TensorFlow.
- NCC Runtime (Neural Network Console library).
- ASMP (Multicore Framework).
- Audio (MP3 coder with recorder and player)
Actually, they say all the SDK and environments are supported for:
- Windows 10/11 (64bit version)
- Linux Ubuntu 16.04 (64bit version) or later
- Mac OS X 10.12 Sierra or later (Does not support 32bit version OS)
visit this site to learn more about Sony microcontrollers. Actually, you can write programs using Bash, Arduino, and NuttX.
According to the Adafruit site, the price starts at $65. The full package will be around $130.
Comparison Spresense board between Arduino uno and esp32
| sony Spresense board | Espressif ESP 32 | Arduino UNO R4 (minima) |
| six cores | two cores | two cores |
| 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4F processor | Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor | 32-bit Arm cortex m4 processor |
| 156 MHz maximum clock speed | 240 Mz maximum clock speed | 48 MHz maximum clock speed |
| 1.5 MB SRAM | 520 KB SRAM | 32 kB SRAM |
| 8 MB flash memory | 4 MB flash memory | 256 kB flash memory |
| I2c, UART,SPI, I2S | I2c, UART, SPI, I2S | I2c, UART, SPI, I2S |
| Bluetooth | (BLE) (yes) | Bluetooth | (BLE) (yes) | Bluetooth | (BLE) (yes) |
| – | – | onboard LED matrix |
| 1.8/3.3/5 v power pins | 3.3/5v power pins | 3.3/5v power pins |
| GPS (yes) | GPS (no) | GPS (no) |
| inbuilt Sound recording options (yes) | inbuilt Sound recording options (no) | inbuilt Sound recording options (no) |
These are the comparisons between the Sony microcontroller (Spresense board), Espressif ESP32, and Arduino UNO R4 (Minima). The Spresense board will have a huge impact on the IoT world, robotics, and other projects. Additionally, the build quality is very high in Sony. Moreover, Sony will announce various types of boards after building the ecosystem.
Visit Sony’s official site to know more details and price about the Spresense board.
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