It's raining boards!
Zephyr 4.3 feature freeze! Peter Korsgaard, the author of Buildroot, has been contributing to Zephyr, particularly around the EEPROM API. Qt completed their acquisition of IAR Systems. Qt already has some level of Zephyr support. The "search by compatible" feature is now live in the Zephyr board catalog. You can now search for boards by specific sensors, peripherals, or IP blocks (e.g., all boards with a BME sensor). A new Devicetree linter (dts-lint) is now enforced in CI to check formatting of devicetree files. It can auto-fix issues and is part of the dts-lsp language server folks can use in VS Code, Vim, etc. to get advanced Devicetree editing features (also see the Tech Talk on the topic) Board Documentation as a Database Benjamin and Fabio discuss whether Zephyr accidentally built the best database on the internet for boards and system-on-chips. Most vendor sites have inconsistent search/filter capabilities, and there's nothing that searches across vendors with structured data like Zephyr's devicetree-based approach. Benjamin is (half-)considering exposing the board catalog data as a formal API, not just the current JSON file. The structured devicetree data is driving better documentation quality -- people are more careful about binding descriptions now that they're prominently displayed. New Shields Added Adafruit DS2484 1-Wire Shield Adafruit LIS3MDL Shield (magnetometer) Adafruit SHT40/SHT41/SHT45 humidity shields Adafruit INA228 Power Monitor -- 85V, 20-bit precision high-side current/power monitor with energy/charge accumulator Adafruit LPS22 Shield (pressure sensor) Adafruit AD5693 DAC shield Canis Labs CANPico shield for Raspberry Pi Pico with MCP251xFD CAN controller. Check out Canis Labs' videos on CAN bus security! New Boards Added (Selection) RAK3112 -- ESP32-S3-based module with LoRa, BLE, and Wi-Fi PIC32CZ CA80 Curiosity Ultra -- Cortex-M7 with gigabit ethernet, high-speed USB, 8MB flash, 1MB SRAM. Part of Microchip's big push with 4-5 new boards this week! Renesas EK-RA8D2 and EK-RA8M2 -- 1GHz Cortex-M85 (!), gigabit ethernet with switch, 1MB MRAM, 2MB SRAM, external 64MB flash and SDRAM, camera port Pebble Time 2 and Pebble 2 Duo -- SiFli-based, still early-stage support New Drivers Heart Rate Monitoring: MAX30101 optical heart rate sensor -- now supports multiple instances (btw, Fabio wants to know: "What application needs to monitor multiple hearts?!") MAX32664C Biometric Sensor Hub -- includes the algorithm and reports actual heart rate (contributed by folks from the ZSWatch project) DA7212 audio codec from NXP FRDM-MCXN236 board. ALS31300 3D Hall Effect Sensor for industrial joysticks MTCH9010 liquid leak detector from Microchip -- uses electrodes (or PCB traces) and likely includes smart anti-corrosion features NXP SC18IS606 I2C-to-SPI bridge HUB12 interface LED matrix display controller Other Notable Changes New Quality of Service (QoS) over Ethernet sample More support for STM32 with firmware in external flash Tips for Getting Changes Merged During Stabilization Use the word "fix" in your commit message if it's actually fixing something! Set the milestone in GitHub to 4.3 (if you have permissions)
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