RTL8721Dx Evaluation Board

Overview

The PKE8721DAF-C13-F10 is an evaluation board based on the Realtek RTL8721DAF-VT2-CG, a combo SoC that supports dual-band Wi-Fi 4 (2.4GHz + 5GHz) and BLE 5.0. With its ultra-low power consumption and abundant peripheral resources, it is widely used in smart home appliances, line controllers, smart door locks, battery cameras, smart remote controllers, Wi-Fi speakers, BLE gateways, and smart POS, etc. For more information, check PKE8721DAF-C13-F10 [1].

Hardware

The features of the RTL8721DAF include the following:

Dual cores:
- KM4 running at up to 345MHz
- KM0 running at up to 115MHz
4MB MCM flash
512KB on-chip SRAM
Wi-Fi:
- 802.11 a/b/g/n 1 x 1, 2.4GHz + 5GHz
- Up to 40MHz bandwidth
Bluetooth:
- BLE 5.0
- Supports LE-1M / LE-2M / LE-Coded PHY (long range)
Peripheral interfaces:
- UART x 4 (up to 8Mbps)
- I2C x 2 (up to 3.4Mbps in high-speed mode)
- SPI x 2 (up to 50Mbps)
- 8 channels of PWM
- (7 + 1) channels of 12-bit ADC
- 4 channels of Cap-Touch detection
- USB 2.0 full-speed device interface x 1
- SDIO device interface x 1 (up to 50MHz in high-speed mode)
- IR interface x 1

Supported Features

The pke8721daf_c13_f10 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.

`pke8721daf_c13_f10/rtl8721dx` target

On-target memory for this board target: 192 KiB of RAM, 4 MiB of Flash.

Type	Location	Description	Compatible
CPU	on-chip	ARM Cortex-M55 CPU1	`arm,cortex-m55`
ADC	on-chip	Ameba ADC1	`realtek,ameba-adc`
Bluetooth	on-chip	Bluetooth HCI for REALTEK AMEBA1	`realtek,ameba-bt-hci`
Clock control	on-chip	Generic fixed-rate clock provider1	`fixed-clock`
Clock control	on-chip	Ameba Reset and Clock controller node1	`realtek,ameba-rcc`
Counter	on-chip	Ameba counters10	`realtek,ameba-counter`
DMA	on-chip	Realtek’s GDMA (General Direct Memory Access) peripheral1	`realtek,ameba-gdma`
Flash controller	on-chip	AMEBA Family flash controller1	`realtek,ameba-flash-controller`
GPIO & Headers	on-chip	Realtek Ameba GPIO controller2	`realtek,ameba-gpio`
I2C	on-chip	Ameba I2C2	`realtek,ameba-i2c`
Interrupt controller	on-chip	ARMv8.1-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1	`arm,v8.1m-nvic`
MTD	on-chip	Flash node1	`soc-nv-flash`
Pin control	on-chip	Realtek Ameba pinctrl is a singleton node responsible for controlling pin function selection and pin properties1	`realtek,ameba-pinctrl`
PWM	on-chip	AMEBA PWM1	`realtek,ameba-pwm`
RNG	on-chip	Ameba TRNG (True Random Number Generator)1	`realtek,ameba-trng`
RTC	on-chip	AMEBA RTC1	`realtek,ameba-rtc`
Serial controller	on-chip	Ameba LOGUART1	`realtek,ameba-loguart`
SPI	on-chip	Ameba SPI2	`realtek,ameba-spi`
SRAM	on-chip	Generic on-chip SRAM1	`mmio-sram`
Timer	on-chip	ARMv8.1-M System Tick1	`arm,armv8.1m-systick`
Watchdog	on-chip	Ameba watchdog1	`realtek,ameba-watchdog`
Wi-Fi	on-chip	Realtek Ameba SoC WiFi2	`realtek,ameba-wifi`

System Requirements

Binary Blobs

Realtek HAL requires binary blobs in order work. Run the command below to retrieve those files.

west blobs fetch hal_realtek

Note

It is recommended running the command above after west update.

Programming and Debugging

The pke8721daf_c13_f10 board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

	flash	debug	debugserver	reset	rtt	attach
amebaflash	✅ (default)
jlink	✅	✅ (default)	✅	✅	✅	✅

Building

An example of building the Hello World application is shown below:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b pke8721daf_c13_f10 samples/hello_world

Flashing

The standard flash target is supported by the board configuration.

Enter Download Mode

To flash the device, you must first put the SoC into download mode using the on-board USB-to-UART converter. Follow these steps:

USB Connection: Connect a USB cable to the USB2UART port.
Enter Download Mode:
- Press and hold the Download button.
- While holding it, briefly press the Chip_En button to reset the SoC.
- Release the Download button after the reset.

The SoC is now in download mode and ready to receive firmware.

Note

The <port_name> placeholder in the flash command must be replaced with the actual serial port (e.g., /dev/ttyUSB0 on Linux or COM3 on Windows).

An example for flashing the Hello World application is shown below:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b pke8721daf_c13_f10 samples/hello_world
west flash --port <port_name>

Enter Normal Mode

After flashing completes successfully, press the Chip_En button once to reboot the SoC. The device then boots into normal mode and executes the flashed Zephyr firmware.

Debugging

Debugging is supported via SWD using a J-Link debug probe connected to PA30 (SWD_CLK) and PA31 (SWD_DAT). An example debug command for the Hello World application:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b pke8721daf_c13_f10 samples/hello_world
west debug