EFR32BG22 Thunderboard (SLTB010A)

SLTB010A is a development kit based on the EFR32BG22 SoC. Early revisions of the kit (A00 and A01) use a slightly different PCB (BRD4184A) from later revisions (BRD4184B).

Hardware

EFR32BG22 Blue Gecko Wireless SoC with upto 76.8 MHz operating frequency
ARM® Cortex® M33 core with 32 kB RAM and 512 kB Flash
Macronix ultra low power 8-Mbit SPI flash (MX25R8035F)
2.4 GHz ceramic antenna for wireless transmission
Silicon Labs Si7021 relative humidity and temperature sensor
Silicon Labs Si1133 UV index and ambient light sensor (EFR32BG22-BRD4184A)
Vishay VEML6035 ambient light sensor (EFR32BG22-BRD4184B)
Silicon Labs Si7210 hall effect sensor
TDK InvenSense ICM-20648 6-axis inertial sensor
Two Knowles SPK0641HT4H-1 MEMS microphones with PDM output (EFR32BG22-BRD4184B)
One LED and one push button
Power enable signals and isolation switches for ultra low power operation
On-board SEGGER J-Link debugger for easy programming and debugging, which includes a USB virtual COM port and Packet Trace Interface (PTI)
Mini Simplicity connector for access to energy profiling and advanced wireless network debugging
Breakout pads for GPIO access and connection to external hardware
Reset button
Automatic switch-over between USB and battery power
CR2032 coin cell holder and external battery connector

For more information about the EFR32BG SoC and Thunderboard EFR32BG22 board:

Supported Features

The sltb010a board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface	Controller	Driver/Component
MPU	on-chip	memory protection unit
NVIC	on-chip	nested vector interrupt controller
SYSTICK	on-chip	systick
COUNTER	on-chip	stimer
SPI(M/S)	on-chip	spi
FLASH	on-chip	flash memory
GPIO	on-chip	gpio
UART	on-chip	serial
WATCHDOG	on-chip	watchdog
TRNG	on-chip	true random number generator
I2C(M/S)	on-chip	i2c
RADIO	on-chip	bluetooth

The default configuration can be found in boards/silabs/dev_kits/sltb010a/sltb010a_defconfig.

Connections and IOs

The EFR32BG22 SoC has four gpio controllers (PORTA, PORTB, PORTC and PORTD).

There are two variants of this board, “A” and “B”. Please take a look at your PCB, to determine which one you have, as the GPIO pin bindings vary between those two.

BRD4184A (SLTB010A revision A00 and A01):

Pin	Function	Usage
PB0	GPIO	LED0 (YELLOW)
PB1	GPIO	SW0 Push Button PB0
PA5	UART_TX	UART TX Console VCOM_TX US1_TX #1
PA6	UART_RX	UART RX Console VCOM_RX US1_RX #1

BRD4184B (SLTB010A revision A02 and newer):

Pin	Function	Usage
PA4	GPIO	LED0 (YELLOW)
PB3	GPIO	SW0 Push Button PB0
PA5	UART_TX	UART TX Console VCOM_TX US1_TX #1
PA6	UART_RX	UART RX Console VCOM_RX US1_RX #1

System Clock

The EFR32BG22 SoC is configured to use the 38.4 MHz external oscillator on the board.

Programming and Debugging

Flashing an application

Connect your device to your host computer using the USB port. The sample application Hello World is used for this example. Build the Zephyr kernel and application, then flash it to the device:

BRD4184A:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b sltb010a@0 samples/hello_world
west flash

BRD4184B:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b sltb010a@2 samples/hello_world
west flash

Note

west flash requires SEGGER J-Link software to be installed on you host computer.

Open a serial terminal (minicom, putty, etc.) with the following settings:

Speed: 115200
Data: 8 bits
Parity: None
Stop bits: 1

Reset the board and you should be able to see on the corresponding Serial Port the following message:

Hello World! sltb010a

Bluetooth

To use the BLE function, run the command below to retrieve necessary binary blobs from the SiLabs HAL repository.

west blobs fetch hal_silabs

Then build the Zephyr kernel and a Bluetooth sample with the following command. The Observer sample application is used in this example.

BRD4184A:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b sltb010a@0 samples/bluetooth/observer

BRD4184B:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b sltb010a@2 samples/bluetooth/observer