Renesas

Renesas is an official partner of LVGL. Therefore, LVGL contains built-in support for Dave2D (the GPU of Renesas) and we also maintain ready-to-use Renesas projects.

Dave2D

Dave2D is capable of accelerating most of the drawing operations of LVGL:

  • Rectangle drawing, even with gradients

  • Image drawing, scaling, and rotation

  • Letter drawing

  • Triangle drawing

  • Line drawing

As Dave2D works in the background, the CPU is free for other tasks. In practice, during rendering, Dave2D can reduce the CPU usage by half or to one-third, depending on the application.

GLCDC

GLCDC is a multi-stage graphics output peripheral available in several Renesas MCUs. It is able to drive LCD panels via a highly configurable RGB interface.

More info can be found at the driver's page.

Supported boards

EK-RA8D1

EK-RA6M3G

RX72N Envision Kit

CPU

480MHz, Arm Cortex-M85 core

120MHz, Arm Cortex-M4 core

240MHz, Renesas RXv3 core

Memory

1MB internal, 64MB external SDRAM
2MB internal, 64MB External Octo-SPI Flash
640kB internal SRAM
2MB internal, 32MB external QSPI Flash
1MB internal SRAM
4MB internal, 32MB external QSPI Flash

Display

4.5”
480x854
2-lane MIPI
4.3”
480x272
Parallel RGB565
4.3”
480x272
Parallel RGB565

Board video

Links

Demo repository for EK-RA8D1

Demo repository for EK-RA6M3G

Demo repository for RX72N Envision Kit

Get started with the Renesas ecosystem

RA Family
  • The official IDE of Renesas is called e² studio. As it's Eclipse-based, it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac as well. The RA family requires the latest version with FSP 5.3. It can be downloaded here.

  • JLink is used for debugging, it can be downloaded here.

  • Clone the ready-to-use repository for your selected board:

    git clone https://github.com/lvgl/lv_port_renesas_ek-ra8d1.git --recurse-submodules
    

    Downloading the .zip from GitHub doesn't work as it doesn't download the submodules.

  • Open e² studio, go to File -> Import project and select General / Existing projects into workspace

  • Browse the cloned folder and press Finish.

  • Double click on configuration.xml. This will activate the Configuration Window.

    Renesas' Flexible Software Package (FSP) incudes BSP and HAL layer support extended with multiple RTOS variants and other middleware stacks. The components will be available via code generation, including the entry point of "main.c".

    Press Generate Project Content in the top right corner.

    Code generation with FSP
  • Build the project by pressing Ctrl + Alt + B

  • Click the Debug button (Debug button). If prompted with Debug Configurations, on the Debugger tab select the J-Link ARM as Debug hardware and the proper IC as Target Device:

    • R7FA8D1BH for EK-RA8D1

      Debugger parameters for RA8
    • R7FA6M3AH for EK-RA6M3G

      Debugger parameters for RA6

Note

On EK-RA8D1 boards, the SW1 DIP switch (middle of the board) 7 should be ON, all others are OFF.

RX Family
  • The official IDE of Renesas is called e² studio. As it's Eclipse-based, it runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac as well. It can be downloaded here.

  • Download and install the required driver for the debugger

  • RX72 requires an external compiler for the RXv3 core. A free and open-source version is available here after a registration.

    The compiler must be activated in e² studio:

    • Go to go to Help -> Add Renesas Toolchains

    • Press the Add... button

    • Browse the installation folder of the toolchain

    <br/>

    Toolchains
  • Clone the ready-to-use lv_port_renesas_rx72n-envision-kit repository:

    git clone https://github.com/lvgl/lv_port_renesas_rx72n-envision-kit.git --recurse-submodules
    

    Downloading the .zip from GitHub doesn't work as it doesn't download the submodules.

  • Open e² studio, go to File -> Import project and select General / Existing projects into workspace

  • Select the cloned folder and press Finish.

  • Double click on RX72N_EnVision_LVGL.scfg. This will activate the Configuration Window.

    Renesas' Smart Configurator (SMC) incudes BSP and HAL layer support extended with multiple RTOS variants and other middleware stacks. The components will be available via code generation, including the entry point of the application.

    Press Generate Code in the top right corner.

    Code generation with SMC
  • Build the project by pressing Ctrl + Alt + B

  • Click the Debug button (Debug button). If prompted with Debug Configurations, on the Debugger tab select the E2 Lite as Debug hardware and R5F572NN as Target Device:

    Debugger parameters for RX72

Note

Make sure that both channels of SW1 DIP switch (next to ECN1) are OFF.

Modify the project

Open a demo

The entry point of the main task is contained in src/LVGL_thread_entry.c in all 3 projects.

You can disable the LVGL demos (or just comment them out) and call some lv_example_...() functions, or add your custom code.

Configuration

src/lv_conf.h contains the most important settings for LVGL. Namely:

  • LV_COLOR_DEPTH to set LVGL's default color depth

  • LV_MEM_SIZE to set the maximum RAM available for LVGL

  • LV_USE_DAVE2D to enable the GPU

Hardware and software components can be modified in a visual way using the Configuration Window.

Support

In case of any problems or questions open an issue in the corresponding repository. .. Autogenerated

lv_renesas_glcdc.h