Arduino Portenta C33 is the latest board from the Arduino Pro family which the company dubs a “high-performance, low-price” solution based on a 200 MHz Renesas RA6M5 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller and equipped with a ESP32-C3 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy module.
The new board provides a cost-effective alternative to the Portenta H7 and X8 boards, but still offers wireless connectivity, a secure element for industrial-grade security, and compatibility with Portenta, MKR, and Nicla components.
Portenta C33 specifications:
- Microcontroller – Renesas R7FA6M5BH2CBG Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller @ up to 200 MHz with 512KB SRAM, 2MB Flash, Arm TrustZone, and Secure Crypto Engine 9
- Storage – 16 MB QSPI Flash
- Connectivity
- 10/100M Ethernet PHY
- ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE module
- USB – 1x USB Type-C high-speed port with Power Delivery support
- I/Os via 2x 80 pin high-density connectors, Arduino MKR headers with castellated hole, and a 5-pin I2C connector
- Storage – SD Card
- Networking – 10/100M Ethernet
- Audio – I2S, SAI, PDM
- Serial – CAN Bus
- Analog – ADC
- Low-speed I/Os – SPI, I2C, GPIO
- Debugging – JTAG/SWD
- Security – NXP SE050C2 Secure Element
- Misc – Reset button
- Power Supply
- Via USB-C PD port
- Support for 3.7V/700mAH minimum LiPo single-cell battery
- Dimensions – 66.04 x 25.40 mm
- Temperature Range – -40°C to +85°C
The board can be programmed with the Arduino IDE or MicroPython, supports OTA firmware updates via services such as Arduino IoT cloud, and is expected to be used in cost-sensitive Industrial IoT or automation applications such as water, gas, or electricity meters, as well as for IoT prototyping, and use cases where Portenta H7/X8 boards are overpowered for the task at hand.
The documentation is currently limited, as the announcement was published in time for Embedded World 2023 where the Arduino Pro team is currently showcasing the Portenta boards and the ecosystem around them. The Arduino Portenta C33 is not available just yet, but it will sell for $68 / 62 Euros, and you can subscribe to a waiting list if you are interested.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
$68 is lower cost ?!?
Yes, because the equivalent Portenta H7 Lite Connected now sells for $106.80.
Hm, curious why Arduino redesigned the board for Renesas usage instead of just get just releases H5 for basically the same feature set and I would also guess much closer to previous H7 from design point of view.