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Atmel AT86RF2XX Transceivers

Overview

The Atmel AT86RF2xx is a high performance radio transceiver targeted for IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee, RF4CE, 6LoWPAN, and ISM applications. The AT86RF2xx is a true SPI-to-antenna solution and can be operated by any external microcontroller.

The current IEEE 802.15.4 AT86RF2xx Zephyr driver currently works with any 2.4 Ghz transceiver, except AT86RF230. The RF2xx driver allows use of IEEE 802.15.4 and Thread protocol network stacks.

This is a generic shield focused not only on Atmel Development Boards Kits. There are compatible designations for AT AVR-RZ600 [1] and AT REB233-XPRO [2]. This means, any Atmel board with 10-pin Xplained or 20-pin Xplained Pro extension headers can be used. You can check Atmel Xplained Pro Hardware Development Kit User Guide [3] for more information. Besides that, Arduino and MikroBus standard headers are available to complement the shield module configurations. For any other project that doesn’t fit on the current available variations an overlay can be created. However, the overlay is the last resource and is recommended use standard header always possible.

RZ600 Module

The RZ600 Development Kit needs Atmel Xplained or Xplained-Pro header connector. The modules from this kit are available without any transceiver advanced features. For Xplained headers the atmel_rf2xx_xplained [5] must be selected. For Xplained-Pro header the atmel_rf2xx_legacy [7] must be enabled.

Pins Assignment of the RZ600 Module

Pin	Name	Function
1	RST	GPIO - Reset
2	MISC	DNU - Do Not Use
3	IRQ	GPIO - Interrupt
4	SLP_TR	GPIO - Multi purpose control signal
5	CS	SPI Chip Select
6	MOSI	SPI Master Out / Slave In
7	MISO	SPI Master In / Slave Out
8	SCLK	SPI Clock
9	GND
10	VDD	POWER +3.3V

REB233-XPRO Module

The REB233-XPRO development kit uses Atmel Xplained Pro header. It is enabled selecting atmel_rf2xx_xpro [6] option.

Pins Assignment of the REB233-XPRO Module

Pin	Name	Function
1	ID	DNU - Do Not Use
2	GND
3	DIG1	DNU - Do Not Use
4	DIG3	DNU - Do Not Use
5	DIG2	GPIO - RX Frame Time Stamping
6	CLKM	DNU - Do Not Use
7	RST	GPIO - Reset
8
9	IRQ	GPIO - Interrupt
10	SLP_TR	GPIO - Multi purpose control signal
11	SDA	EEPROM - AT24MAC602
12	SCL	EEPROM - AT24MAC602
13
14
15	CS	SPI Chip Select
16	MOSI	SPI Master Out / Slave In
17	MISO	SPI Master In / Slave Out
18	SCLK	SPI Clock
19	GND
20	VDD	POWER +3.3V

Note

DIG2 is not current implemented on RF2xx driver.

Arduino Shields

Arduino Uno R3 header is available without advanced features. It is enabled selecting atmel_rf2xx_arduino [8] variant option.

Pins Assignment of the Arduino Shield Modules

Pin	Name	Function
D0
D1
D2	IRQ	GPIO - Interrupt
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7
D8	RST	GPIO - Reset
D9	SLP_TR	GPIO - Multi purpose control signal
D10	CS	SPI Chip Select
D11	MOSI	SPI Master Out / Slave In
D12	MISO	SPI Master In / Slave Out
D13	SCLK	SPI Clock
D14
D15
	GND
	VDD	POWER +3.3V
	VCC	POWER +5.0V

MikroBus Shields

MikroBus header is available without advanced features. It is enabled selecting atmel_rf2xx_mikrobus [9] variant option.

Pins Assignment of the MikroBus Shield Modules

Pin	Name	Function
AN	RST	GPIO - Reset
RST
CS	CS	SPI Chip Select
SCK	SCLK	SPI Clock
MISO	MISO	SPI Master In / Slave Out
MOSI	MOSI	SPI Master Out / Slave In
VCC-3.3	VDD	POWER +3.3V
GND	GND
GND	GND
VCC-5.0	VCC	POWER +5.0V
SDA
SCL
TX
RX
INT	IRQ	GPIO - Interrupt
PWM	SLP_TR	GPIO - Multi purpose control signal

Supported variations

The below table suggests shield variation accordingly with end user application. When a standard connector (arduino, mikrobus, xplained, xplained-pro) is available on board, user should select the matching shield configuration. When atmel_rf2xx shield is used with a board that doesn’t feature a standard connector, a dedicated <board>.overlay file should be provided. The remaining configurations should be used based on the board standard headers available.

Connector Standard	Shield Designation	Variation
Without standard (overlay)	atmel_rf2xx [4]	1
Atmel Xplained header	atmel_rf2xx_xplained [5]	2
Atmel Xplained Pro header	atmel_rf2xx_xpro [6]	3
Atmel Xplained Pro header	atmel_rf2xx_legacy [7]	4
Arduino	atmel_rf2xx_arduino [8]	5
MikroBus	atmel_rf2xx_mikrobus [9]	6

Requirements

This shield requires a board which provides a configuration that allows an SPI interface, an interrupt signal and two GPIO. (see Shields for more details).

Note

Boards that already have a network interface: Check network documentation to understand how properly configure both interfaces. To keep simple, make sure IEEE 802.15.4 is the only interface enabled at Networking -> Link Layer Options. This will avoid problems running Zephyr samples.

Tested Boards

Board	Disabled Interface	Variation
ATMEL sam4s_xplained		2
ATMEL sam4e_xpro	Ethernet	3 , 4
ATMEL sam_v71_xult/samv71q21	Ethernet	3 , 4 , 5

Sample usage

You can try use IEEE 802.15.4 and/or OpenThread with the Zephyr Echo server and Echo client samples, which provide out-of-the-box configuration for both IEEE 802.15.4 and OpenThread. To enable IEEE 802.15.4 support in the samples, build them with overlay-802154.conf overlay config file. Same way, to enable OpenThread support, build them with overlay-ot.conf overlay config file. See Echo server (advanced) and Echo client (advanced) samples for details.

Build and Programming

Set --shield <shield designator> when you invoke west build.

west build -b sam4s_xplained --shield atmel_rf2xx_xplained samples/net/sockets/echo_server -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE=overlay-802154.conf
west flash

west build -b [sam4e_xpro | sam_v71_xult/samv71q21] --shield [atmel_rf2xx_xpro | atmel_rf2xx_legacy] samples/net/sockets/echo_server -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE=overlay-802154.conf
west flash

west build -b [sam_v71_xult/samv71q21 | frdm_k64f | nucleo_f767zi] --shield atmel_rf2xx_arduino samples/net/sockets/echo_server -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE=overlay-802154.conf
west flash

west build -b lpcxpresso55s69_ns --shield atmel_rf2xx_microbus samples/net/sockets/echo_server -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE=overlay-802154.conf
west flash