Sparrow Hawk R-Car V4H SBC
Overview
Retronix Sparrow Hawk Single Board Computer (SBC) is powered by the latest Renesas R-Car V4H System-on-Chip. Sparrow Hawk focuses on robotics, industrial automation, and rapid prototyping, offering a highly flexible and cost-effective development platform.
The R-Car V4H system-on-chip is tailored for central processing for advanced driver-assistance (ADAS) and automated driving (AD) systems. The R-Car V4H achieves deep learning performance of up to 34 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second), enabling high-speed image recognition and processing of surrounding objects by automotive cameras, radar, and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR).
Hardware
Hardware capabilities of the board can be found on Retronix Sparrow Hawk page. All the features of Renesas R-Car V4H SoC are described in the product page Renesas R-Car V4H.
Supported Features
We support Zephyr running on Cortex R52 processor that is provided for RTOS purpose.
The sparrowhawk_rcar_v4h board supports the hardware features listed below.
- on-chip / on-board
- Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.
- 2 / 2
-
Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files. -
vnd,foo -
Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.
sparrowhawk_rcar_v4h/r8a779g0/r52 target
Type |
Location |
Description |
Compatible |
|---|---|---|---|
CPU |
on-chip |
ARM Cortex-R52 CPU1 |
|
Clock control |
on-chip |
Renesas R8A779G0 SoC Clock Pulse Generator / Module Standby and Software Reset1 |
|
on-chip |
Generic fixed-rate clock provider1 |
||
GPIO & Headers |
on-chip |
Renesas RCAR GPIO2 |
|
Interrupt controller |
on-chip |
ARM Generic Interrupt Controller v31 |
|
Pin control |
on-chip |
Renesas R-Car Pin Function Controller1 |
|
Serial controller |
on-chip |
||
SRAM |
on-chip |
Generic on-chip SRAM1 |
|
Timer |
on-chip |
per-core ARM architected timer1 |
Connections and IOs
For the connections and IO interfaces, refer to the official page Retronix Sparrow Hawk
UART
Here is information about serial ports provided on Sparrow Hawk board :
Software interface |
Physical Interface |
Hardware Interface |
Converter |
Usage Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
/tty/USBx, COMn (lower) |
CN4 USB Port |
HSCIF0 |
FT2232H |
Used by U-Boot and Linux |
/tty/USBy, COMm (higher) |
CN4 USB Port |
HSCIF1 |
FT2232H |
Default for Zephyr |
Note
By default, Zephyr console output is assigned to HSCIF1 with 921600 8N1 without hardware flow control.
Programming and Debugging
You can build the applications as usual. This is the example for Hello World:
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b sparrowhawk_rcar_v4h/r8a779g0/r52 samples/hello_world
Configuring a Console
Connect a USB cable from your PC to CN4 USB port. There are two COM ports (or /tty/USB devices) available. Both of them are used for booting procedure. Use the following settings with your serial terminal of choice (minicom, putty, etc.):
Speed: 921600
Data: 8 bits
Parity: None
Stop bits: 1
Flashing
The board does not support flashing Zephyr image. However, the image writing and loading can be done with U-Boot.
Make sure you have already flashed the board with U-Boot, see the guideline at: Flash_loader, section “3.2.2. Flashing loader”. Connect the terminal software to the serial port of HSCIF0 (lower /tty/USBx or COMn). Powerup the board by pressing SW1 switch. You would see the boot log:
U-Boot SPL 2025.07 (Aug 07 2025 - 04:02:12 +0000)
Trying to boot from SPI
U-Boot 2025.07 (Aug 07 2025 - 04:02:12 +0000)
CPU: Renesas Electronics R8A779G0 rev 3.0
Model: Retronix Sparrow Hawk board based on r8a779g3
DRAM: 2 GiB (total 16 GiB)
Core: 87 devices, 23 uclasses, devicetree: separate
MMC: mmc@ee140000: 0
Loading Environment from SPIFlash... SF: Detected w77q51nw with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 64 KiB, total 64 MiB
OK
In: serial@e6540000
Out: serial@e6540000
Err: serial@e6540000
Net: eth0: ethernet@e6800000
=>
Note
From U-Boot log, r8a779g3 is the part number of the revision 3.0 of V4H SoC (R8A779G0).
This number may change with future board version.
Press any key to stop the booting and continue at the U-Boot prompt.
Method 1: Using TFTP to transfer Zephyr image
This assumes that you have already installed a TFTP server in the host PC.
Put the image bin file build/zephyr/zephyr.bin inside TFTP root directory. Run these
U-Boot commands:
=> setenv ipaddr <board.ip>
=> setenv serverip <tftp.server.ip>
=> tftp 0x40040000 zephyr.bin
=> rproc init; rproc load 0:3 0x40040000 0x200000; rproc start 0
Method 2: Using serial to transfer Zephyr image
Some terminal software support transferring file via serial using Kermit protocol. Use this U-Boot commands:
=> loadb 0x40040000 921600
## Ready for binary (kermit) download to 0x40040000 at 921600 bps...
(Transfer zephyr.bin after this line)
## Total Size = 0x00009f2c = 40748 Bytes
## Start Addr = 0x40040000
=> rproc init; rproc load 0:3 0x40040000 0x200000; rproc start 0
You should see Zephyr boot log in the terminal of HSCIF1:
*** Booting Zephyr OS build v4.2.0-4945-g8fc6351ef451 ***
Hello World! sparrowhawk_rcar_v4h/r8a779g0/r52