LVGL ported to Renesas RZ/G2UL-EVKIT

🚀 This repository is available in the LVGL Project Creator, making it easy to create and customize a new project in just a few clicks.

Overview

The Renesas RZ/G2UL is a general-purpose MPU with a Cortex-A55 (1.0 GHz). This evaluation kit consists of both a SoM (System on Module) which carries the RZ/G2UL MPU, as well as a carrier board which carries the SoM. The SoM complies with the SMARC v2.1 stardard. The carrier board features IO useful for MPU applications such as a display interface (Parallel-IF) and included parallel-to-Micro-HDMI bridge, 2 ethernet ports, headphone and microphone jacks, USB serial terminal, USB host, camera input, an additional Micro SD card slot, and exposed GPIO headers.

Buy

You can purchase the RZ/G2UL-EVKIT from several sources. The RZ/G2UL is also sold as SoM-only if you are using a different carrier board or already have one.

• Renesas's website
• Mouser
• DigiKey

Benchmark

The benchmark was run with the v8.3 fbdev driver.

Name	Avg. CPU	Avg. FPS	Avg. time	render time	flush time
Empty screen	19%	33	5	2	3
Moving wallpaper	31%	33	9	6	3
Single rectangle	4%	33	0	0	0
Multiple rectangles	8%	33	1	1	0
Multiple RGB images	29%	33	8	5	3
Multiple ARGB images	60%	33	18	15	3
Rotated ARGB images	98%	16	69	66	3
Multiple labels	55%	33	13	10	3
Screen sized text	3%	33	0	0	0
Multiple arcs	43%	33	12	9	3
Containers	34%	34	7	7	0
Containers with overlay	90%	33	30	27	3
Containers with opa	50%	33	11	11	0
Containers with opa_layer	63%	34	19	19	0
Containers with scrolling	83%	33	24	21	3
Widgets demo	42%	33	12	11	1
All scenes avg.	44%	32	14	13	1

Specification

CPU and Memory

• MCU: Arm Cortex-A55 (1.0 GHz)
• RAM: 1GB DDR4 SDRAM
• Flash: Micro SD card, 64GB eMMC, 16MB QSPI flash
• GPU: None

Display and Touch

• Resolution: Tested on 1920x1080 (1280x800 virtual resolution)
• Interface: Micro-HDMI via the included parallel interface bridge
• Color Depth: 32-bit
• Touch Pad: USB touch input supported

Connectivity

• 2 ethernet ports
• headphone and microphone jacks
• USB port
• camera input
• additional Micro SD card slot
• GPIO headers
• USB serial terminal

Getting started

Hardware setup

• Insert a prepared Micro SD card in the slot on the SoM (not the slot on the carrier board). See the next section for details about obtaining an OS image for the Micro SD card.
• Connect an HDMI display with a Micro-HDMI cable via the parallel-to-Micro-HDMI bridge which connects to the ribbon cable connector on the SoM. Do not try to use the Micro-HDMI port on the carrier board marked "CN13". If you use an HDMI-powered display, ensure the board's power adapter provides enough power for both the board and the display.
• Connect a USB mouse to interract with LVGL UIs. Optionally use a USB hub to connect a keyboard too. There is no desktop so there is no default purpose for a keyborad.
• Optionally connect an ethernet cable to either of the two ethernet ports.
• Optionally connect the micro USB port marked "SER 3 UART"/"CN14" to your computer.
• Connect a power adapter to the USB-C port. It was tested with a 5V-3A power supply and also with a PC USB-C port. See the next section about turning the board on and off.

Software setup

These steps are based on the Renesas RZ/G HMI SDK Getting Started guide.

1. Download RZ/G HMI SDK Version 2.3.0.0
2. Extract the zip file.
3. Navigate into the extracted directory and extract the nested zip file called image-file_rzg2ul_hmi-sdk_v2.3.0.0.zip which contains core-image-bsp-smarc-rzg2ul.wic.bmap and core-image-bsp-smarc-rzg2ul.wic.gz.
4. Insert a Micro SD card into your PC and flash the image to it.
   • On a Linux PC, first ensure all partitions on the card are unmounted. See the officical guide for more details about that. Use bmaptool (sudo apt install bmap-tools) to flash the SD card with the command

     sudo bmaptool copy core-image-bsp-smarc-rzg2ul.wic.gz <path to block device>

     Where <path to block device> is the Micro SD card block device. It may be /dev/mmcblk0. Take care to ensure you do not accidentally overwrite a system drive.
   • On a Windows PC, use Win32 Disk Imager or balenaEtcher (you can also use this on a Linux PC, but bmaptool may be faster) to flash the file called core-image-bsp-smarc-rzg2ul.wic.gz.
5. Set the DIP switches as in the officical guide. SW1 is 111 and SW11 is 1101
6. Set up the board as in the "Hardware setup" section. Press the red power button (SW9) for 1 second.

Run the project

1. Prepare a Linux development environment on a Linux PC or in a Docker container, WSL, or similar. Ensure the packages python3, xz, file, and make are installed. I.e.

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install python3 xz-utils file make

2. In the extracted SDK zip from the previous section, extract the nested zip file called toolchain-installer_rzg2ul_hmi-sdk_v2.3.0.0.zip.
3. Run the below command and follow the prompts to install the cross-compiler.

   sudo sh poky-glibc-x86_64-core-image-bsp-aarch64-smarc-rzg2ul-toolchain-3.1.31.sh

4. From now on, every time you open a new terminal, you will need to run the following command to configure your shell's environment variables for building applications for RZ/G2UL.

   source /opt/poky/3.1.31/environment-setup-aarch64-poky-linux

5. Build the application.

   make -j$(nproc)

6. Now you can transfer the binary application lvgl_demo_benchmark to the board. You can do it any of the following ways.
   • If connected to ethernet you can transfer the file over LAN.

     scp lvgl_demo_benchmark root@<ip-address>:/home/root/

     where <ip-address> is replaced by the local IP address of the board. You can find it with

     ip a

     and inspect the eth0/eth1->inet field. The file will be sent to /home/root/.
   • You can mount the SD card on your PC and put the file into the image's filesystem anywhere you like. There are two partitions on the SD card. Go to the partition called root. A good place to put the application is /home/root/. You may need need root privileges on your PC to access this directory. Make sure you unmount the SD card before removing to ensure the changes are synced fully.
   • Use a USB drive to transfer the file.
7. Run the application from the serial terminal. First, you should stop the demo launcher if it's running.

   systemctl stop demo-launcher

   Then, run the application.

   ./lvgl_demo_benchmark

To delete all the build outputs, run

make clean

or

git clean -Xf .

Debugging

Unfortunately gdb and gdbserver are not installed in the image. "printf" debugging will have to suffice.

Notes

See these official Renesas resources.

• Renesas RZ/G HMI SDK Getting Started guide
• rzg_hmi_sdk GitHub repo

Continue reading for advanced extra info.

The rzg_hmi_sdk repo builds apps by dynamically linking to the lvgl and lv_drivers system libraries which are resident in the G2UL's image at /usr/lib/. Dynamic linking reduces the size of the executable since the executable does not actually contain LVGL's internal functions. There are other benefits but it's out of the scope of this README. In contrast, this lv_port_renesas_rz-g2ul-evkit repo statically links lvgl because the version of lvgl here is different than the one installed in the G2UL image. The lvgl here ports the v9 benchmark to v8.3.

The lv_conf.h is similar to the one in /opt/poky/3.1.31/sysroots/aarch64-poky-linux/usr/include/lvgl/. The rzg_hmi_sdk repo uses those headers when compiling.

Contribution and Support

If you find any issues with the development board feel free to open an Issue in this repository. For LVGL related issues (features, bugs, etc) please use the main lvgl repository.

If you found a bug and found a solution too please send a Pull request. If you are new to Pull requests refer to Our Guide to learn the basics.