ESP32-C6-DevKitC
Overview
ESP32-C6-DevKitC is an entry-level development board based on ESP32-C6-WROOM-1(U), a general-purpose module with a 8 MB SPI flash. This board integrates complete Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, and Thread functions. For more information, check ESP32-C6-DevKitC [1].
Hardware
ESP32-C6 is Espressif’s first Wi-Fi 6 SoC integrating 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 (LE) and the 802.15.4 protocol. ESP32-C6 achieves an industry-leading RF performance, with reliable security features and multiple memory resources for IoT products. It consists of a high-performance (HP) 32-bit RISC-V processor, which can be clocked up to 160 MHz, and a low-power (LP) 32-bit RISC-V processor, which can be clocked up to 20 MHz. It has a 320KB ROM, a 512KB SRAM, and works with external flash.
ESP32-C6-DevKitC is an entry-level development board based on ESP32-C6-WROOM-1(U), a general-purpose module with a 8 MB SPI flash.
Most of the I/O pins are broken out to the pin headers on both sides for easy interfacing. Developers can either connect peripherals with jumper wires or mount ESP32-C6-DevKitC on a breadboard.
ESP32-C6 includes the following features:
32-bit core RISC-V microcontroller with a clock speed of up to 160 MHz
400 KB of internal RAM
WiFi 802.11 ax 2.4GHz
Fully compatible with IEEE 802.11b/g/n protocol
Bluetooth LE: Bluetooth 5.3 certified
Internal co-existence mechanism between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to share the same antenna
IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee and Thread)
Digital interfaces:
30x GPIOs (QFN40), or 22x GPIOs (QFN32)
2x UART
1x Low-power (LP) UART
1x General purpose SPI
1x I2C
1x Low-power (LP) I2C
1x I2S
1x Pulse counter
1x USB Serial/JTAG controller
1x TWAI® controller, compatible with ISO 11898-1 (CAN Specification 2.0)
1x SDIO 2.0 slave controller
LED PWM controller, up to 6 channels
1x Motor control PWM (MCPWM)
1x Remote control peripehral
1x Parallel IO interface (PARLIO)
General DMA controller (GDMA), with 3 transmit channels and 3 receive channels
Event task matrix (ETM)
Analog interfaces:
1x 12-bit SAR ADCs, up to 7 channels
1x temperature sensor
Timers:
1x 52-bit system timer
1x 54-bit general-purpose timers
3x Watchdog timers
1x Analog watchdog timer
Low Power:
Four power modes designed for typical scenarios: Active, Modem-sleep, Light-sleep, Deep-sleep
Security:
Secure boot
Flash encryption
4-Kbit OTP, up to 1792 bits for users
Cryptographic hardware acceleration: (AES-128/256, ECC, HMAC, RSA, SHA, Digital signature, Hash)
Random number generator (RNG)
For more information, check the datasheet at ESP32-C6 Datasheet [2] or the technical reference manual at ESP32-C6 Technical Reference Manual [3].
Supported Features
Current Zephyr’s ESP32-C6-DevKitC board supports the following features:
Interface |
Controller |
Driver/Component |
|---|---|---|
UART |
on-chip |
serial port |
GPIO |
on-chip |
gpio |
PINMUX |
on-chip |
pinmux |
USB-JTAG |
on-chip |
hardware interface |
SPI Master |
on-chip |
spi |
Watchdog |
on-chip |
watchdog |
LEDC |
on-chip |
pwm |
SPI DMA |
on-chip |
spi |
GDMA |
on-chip |
dma |
TRNG |
on-chip |
entropy |
USB-CDC |
on-chip |
serial |
Wi-Fi |
on-chip |
System requirements
Prerequisites
Espressif HAL requires WiFi and Bluetooth binary blobs in order work. Run the command below to retrieve those files.
west blobs fetch hal_espressif
Note
It is recommended running the command above after west update.
Building & Flashing
Simple boot
The board could be loaded using the single binary image, without 2nd stage bootloader. It is the default option when building the application without additional configuration.
Note
Simple boot does not provide any security features nor OTA updates.
MCUboot bootloader
User may choose to use MCUboot bootloader instead. In that case the bootloader must be built (and flashed) at least once.
There are two options to be used when building an application:
Sysbuild
Manual build
Note
User can select the MCUboot bootloader by adding the following line to the board default configuration file.
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y
Sysbuild
The sysbuild makes possible to build and flash all necessary images needed to bootstrap the board with the EPS32 SoC.
To build the sample application using sysbuild use the command:
west build -b esp32c6_devkitc --sysbuild samples/hello_world
By default, the ESP32 sysbuild creates bootloader (MCUboot) and application images. But it can be configured to create other kind of images.
Build directory structure created by sysbuild is different from traditional Zephyr build. Output is structured by the domain subdirectories:
build/
├── hello_world
│ └── zephyr
│ ├── zephyr.elf
│ └── zephyr.bin
├── mcuboot
│ └── zephyr
│ ├── zephyr.elf
│ └── zephyr.bin
└── domains.yaml
Note
With --sysbuild option the bootloader will be re-build and re-flash
every time the pristine build is used.
For more information about the system build please read the Sysbuild (System build) documentation.
Manual build
During the development cycle, it is intended to build & flash as quickly possible. For that reason, images can be built one at a time using traditional build.
The instructions following are relevant for both manual build and sysbuild. The only difference is the structure of the build directory.
Note
Remember that bootloader (MCUboot) needs to be flash at least once.
Build and flash applications as usual (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b esp32c6_devkitc samples/hello_world
The usual flash target will work with the esp32c6_devkitc board
configuration. Here is an example for the Hello World
application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b esp32c6_devkitc samples/hello_world
west flash
Open the serial monitor using the following command:
west espressif monitor
After the board has automatically reset and booted, you should see the following message in the monitor:
***** Booting Zephyr OS vx.x.x-xxx-gxxxxxxxxxxxx *****
Hello World! esp32c6_devkitc
Debugging
As with much custom hardware, the ESP32-C6 modules require patches to OpenOCD that are not upstreamed yet. Espressif maintains their own fork of the project. The custom OpenOCD can be obtained at OpenOCD ESP32 [4].
The Zephyr SDK uses a bundled version of OpenOCD by default. You can overwrite that behavior by adding the
-DOPENOCD=<path/to/bin/openocd> -DOPENOCD_DEFAULT_PATH=<path/to/openocd/share/openocd/scripts>
parameter when building.
Here is an example for building the Hello World application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b esp32c6_devkitc samples/hello_world -- -DOPENOCD=<path/to/bin/openocd> -DOPENOCD_DEFAULT_PATH=<path/to/openocd/share/openocd/scripts>
west flash
You can debug an application in the usual way. Here is an example for the Hello World application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b esp32c6_devkitc samples/hello_world
west debug