Ok I now have 1 of each of the Arduino Uno R4 Minima and Arduino Uno R4 Wifi and as always a little bit of excitement if you are into this sort of thing – especially when Arduino release a reasonably priced board
Here they are out of the boxes
Here are the technical specs of both boards, if you are from the older Arduino Uno days I have highlighted things that I found interesting in bold
Arduino R4 Minima
| Board | Name | Arduino® UNO R4 Minima |
| SKU | ABX00080 | |
| Microcontroller | Renesas RA4M1 (Arm® Cortex®-M4) | |
| USB | USB-C® | Programming Port |
| Pins | Digital I/O Pins | 14 |
| Pins | Analog input pins | 6 |
| DAC | 1 | |
| PWM pins | 6 | |
| Communication | UART | Yes, 4x |
| I2C | Yes, 1x | |
| SPI | Yes, 1x | |
| CAN | Yes 1 CAN Bus | |
| Power | Circuit operating voltage | 5 V |
| Input voltage (VIN) | 6-24 V | |
| DC Current per I/O Pin | 8 mA | |
| Clock speed | Main core | 48 MHz |
| Memory | RA4M1 | 256 kB Flash, 32 kB RAM |
| Dimensions | Width | 68.85 mm |
| Length | 53.34 mm | |
Arduino Uno R4 Wifi
| Board | Name | Arduino® UNO R4 WiFi |
| SKU | ABX00087 | |
| Microcontroller | Renesas RA4M1 (Arm® Cortex®-M4) | |
| USB | USB-C® | Programming Port |
| Pins | Digital I/O Pins | 14 |
| Pins | Analog input pins | 6 |
| DAC | 1 | |
| PWM pins | 6 | |
| Communication | UART | Yes, 4x |
| I2C | Yes, 1x | |
| SPI | Yes, 1x | |
| CAN | Yes 1 CAN Bus | |
| Power | Circuit operating voltage | 5 V (ESP32-S3 is 3.3 V) |
| Input voltage (VIN) | 6-24 V | |
| DC Current per I/O Pin | 8 mA | |
| Clock speed | Main core | 48 MHz |
| ESP32-S3 | up to 240 MHz | |
| Memory | RA4M1 | 256 kB Flash, 32 kB RAM |
| ESP32-S3 | 384 kB ROM, 512 kB SRAM | |
| Dimensions | Width | 68.85 mm |
| Length | 53.34 mm | |
Summary
I'll be using these on this site in some examples going forward
The one that interests me the most is the Wifi board which has a 12-bit DAC, CAN BUS, OP AMP , a 12×8 red LED matrix, Wifi, and Bluetooth using an ESP32-S3 module, there are also some other features such as a QWIC connector which matches with a lot of the sensors I have
There are also features such as faster clock speed and more memory but its the ESP32 that excites me – a reasonably priced Arduino made, UNO form factor meaning that existing shields should work (I'll put that to the tests) and the ability to use Wifi and Bluetooth certainly open this up to some interesting IoT projects
I also notice that both boards offer HID support so you can simulate a keyboard and/or mouse and there are a couple of other features such as 24v power input range – that may help you connect more power hungry devices such as motors and led strips using the same power source, which is always handy rather than having a multi voltage supply or even more than one supply. Again I will be looking at that.
Links
Fans of schematics and specs – who isn't here you go
https://docs.arduino.cc/resources/schematics/ABX00087-schematics.pdf
https://docs.arduino.cc/resources/datasheets/ABX00087-datasheet.pdf
https://docs.arduino.cc/resources/schematics/ABX00080-schematics.pdf
https://docs.arduino.cc/resources/datasheets/ABX00080-datasheet.pdf
Pricing
Its about 18 euros for the R4 Minima and 25 euros for the Wifi variant – for an official board that's not too bad
Thanks to https://shop.sb-components.co.uk/ for the prompt service and having them in stock. Not an a affiliate link – although we all have our price 🙂
