Compact USB-Capable CH32V003 Development Board

LECTRONZ recently released details of one of their latest products called the CH32V003 USB development board. Designed only on development and evaluation purposes, the new board aims to provide hardware design engineers and developers a more robust platform for experimenting with RISC-V microcontrollers.

Let’s have a look at the hardware features first. The CH32V003 USB dev board features a cost-effective 48MHz CH32V003F4U6 microcontroller from WCH with 2KB of RAM and 16KB of Flash memory, a user LED, a reset button, an external pre-installed crystal, and 18 GPIOs (three of them are designated for USB functionality, with accessible USB data lines via two through-holes). The crystal is optional and can be readily removed and bypassed with a solder bridge, offering flexibility in clock configurations.

One distinguishing feature that comes with the board is the fact that it allows you to use a bit-bang USB connection with the rv003usb stack. This means the board can be used as a keyboard, a mouse, or any other USB LS peripheral device. Its size is also very small (16mm x 26mm) and there’s about a 0.5-inch distance between the headers, so it fits greatly on a breadboard.

Features:

• 1x USB-C connector
• Optional pre-installed Crystal
• 1x User Button that can also be used as a Reset Button
• 1x USB bit-bang connection

The compact CH32V003 USB-capable board is fully open-source. It maintains full compatibility with the open source ch32v003fun project and has PCB design and schematics available on GitHub and licensed under the open hardware the CERN-OHL. The ch32v003fun is an open source development environment containing tools, headers, and examples needed for the efficient use of the CH32V003. It includes the official WCH Link-E Programmer, an STM32F042 Programmer, an ESP32S2 programmer, an Arduino-based Ardulink interface, support for gdb server-style-debugging that can be used for use with Visual Studio, and several illustrations using the ch32v003fun.

Lectronz adds that the development board can be programmed either with an AVR-based ATMega328P device such as the Uno R3, Nano, etc or with a compatible SWIO programmer, for example, the WCH LinkE.

Pricing and Availability

The first batch of the CH32V003 board is out for sale now with one unit selling for $5.16, but huge discounts apply if you are buying more. For instance, two units go for $5.58 while three units sell for $6.42. Shipping is expected to be within two to three days after purchase. Other useful details are available on the LECTRONZ’s product page.

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