Skip to main content

Meadow F7v2

The Meadow F7v2 System-on-Module (SoM) is available in two models, based on two differing form factors:

  • Meadow F7v2 Feather Development Module - An Adafruit Feather specification compatible design, intended for development, prototyping, and low-volume (1,000 or less) production.
  • Meadow F7v2 Core-Compute Module - A surface mount device (SMD) intended for high-volume and industrial production, the F7 Production also adds Ethernet and SD card capabilities.

Rendering of the two F7v2 boards: left is the Meadow F7v2 Development Module with labeled pins for prototyping and development, right is the Core-Compute Module in a minimal rectangular footprint intended for surface mount use.

V2 Upgrades​

The F7v2 includes a number of upgrades from the previous v1 board, including:

  • 64MB of Flash - This is an upgrade from 32MB in v1, and with only 4MB or reserved system space, a whopping 60MB is now user accessible.
  • Upgraded Antenna - We changed out the antenna with a new model that has 10x better performance. In fact, we get better WiFi performance out of the board than our iPhones!
  • Fully SMT-Compatible - The F7v2 has hybrid castellated header/IO mounts that allow for use as both a through-hole (PTH) device, as well as a surface mount device (SMD/SMT). Additionally, there are no components on the underside, so it will solder flush without impediment.
  • I2S Sound - Coming soon via Meadow.Core APIs, we’ve added a full set of hardware IO for inter-integrated sound, which enables both I2S microphone input, and sound output.
  • Low-power Timer Input - Also available soon in software, F7v2 includes a pin that has a low-power timer that can count pulses even while the board is asleep!
  • Fixed Battery Voltage - A bug in the design of v1.0 meant that the 3V3 rail could dip as low as 3.0V when being powered by a battery via the integrated battery connector/charging circuit. We changed the power components to make sure that the full 3.3V is available.
  • Better Buttons - We also swapped out the buttons on the board with high-quality Wurth Elektrik buttons that have a greater surface area and a much nicer click.
  • Upgraded Silkscreen Design - The new silk screen makes bus IO identification much easier.
  • Open Source - We'll be open-sourcing the design soon. This will allow folks to use it with other platform technologies, or build their own board.

Additional Core-Compute Features​

The core-compute module adds additional features not available in the developer form-factor:

  • Ethernet - The core-compute module contains an RMII interface for hooking up to an ethernet PHY, and Meadow.OS now has built-in ethernet support.
  • SD-Card IO - A high-speed SDMMC interface is also broken out, allowing full-speed SD-Card read/writes.
  • Additional IO - An additional I2C bus, SPI bus, and additional GPIO have been added.

Developing with the F7v2​

Developing with the F7v2 board is largely the same as with the v1 series, but with two minor differences.

App Class Definition​

The Meadow.Core API includes strongly-typed APIs for the pinout of the board, but in order to get the right pin definition, you'll need to modify you App class definition from F7Feather to F7FeatherV2 as illustrated below:

public class LEDApp : App<F7FeatherV2>

Then in your application, you can get strongly-typed access to the pins on the board as before. From within the app class, it's available via the Device class:

var d5 = Device.CreateDigitalInputPort(Device.Pins.D05);

And from other classes, it's available via a singleton instance of your app:

var d5 = Device.CreateDigitalInputPort(MeadowApp.Device.Pins.D05);

Note that MeadowApp should be the name of your application class.

Pinout​

Also note that the pinout of the device is slightly different than the v1. Please refer to the following illustration for pinout information:

Diagram of the Meadow F7v2 Development board with pins numbered and labeled with available functionality as well as interrupt groupings marked.