Seeed Studio Announces SAM D51-Powered Wio Terminal All-in-One Dev Board and Raspberry Pi HAT
The latest entry in the Wio family can be used as an all-in-one standalone dev board, or mated to a Raspberry Pi as a HAT.
Seeed Studio has announced the launch of the Wio Terminal, a compact development board for physical interaction featuring a built-in 2.4" display, sensors, outputs, and compatibility with the Raspberry Pi while also operating as a standalone system.
The latest in Seeed's Wireless Input/Output (Wio) family, Wio Terminal aims to be a one-stop system for a range of physical interaction projects. "Instead of being a single embedded functional module," the company explains, "Wio Terminal is a simple and tiny device to build I/O with the physical world, equipped with a 2.4 inch LCD and a compact enclosure."
The device itself can operate wholly standalone, programmed via the Arduino IDE, MicroPython, ArduPy, and the like. Inside its plastic housing is an ATSAMD51P19 system-on-chip with an Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller running at 120MHz stock with boost potential to 200MHz, 4MB of external flash memory, 192kB of RAM, and a range of IO. A Realtek RTL8720DN module provides dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity as well as Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and a USB connector can be used for programming and power or as a USB Host device for a range of accessories.
The design includes a microSD slot for additional storage, two Grove-type connectors for external hardware boards, a five-way joystick just beneath the 2.4" LCD panel on its top, three user-programmable buttons, and a 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header. This latter feature reveals a second mode to the Wio Terminal's operation: Rather than acting as a standalone device, it can mate with any Raspberry Pi via the GPIO header to work as a HAT. Finally, the Wio Terminal also packs a built-in accelerometer, light sensor, infrared emitter, and piezoelectric buzzer.
Seed has prepared three demonstration projects for the Wio Terminal: Data capture and graphing; image loading and display from the microSD; accelerometer reading and plotting; and animated "Emoji" faces. More details on these projects, including source code links, can be found on the official announcement.
The Wio Terminal is now available to pre-order from Seeed's store, priced at $29.90 per unit before volume discounts; pre-order customers will also receive a free Wio Link, an ESP8266-powered precursor to the Wio Terminal.