LVGL ported to Renesas EK-RZ/A3M

🚀 This repository is available in the LVGL Project Creator, making it easy to create and customize a new project in just a few clicks.

Overview

The Renesas EK-RZ/A3M board is an evaluation kit for the RZ/A3M MPU. It is an MPU but it has a focus on baremetal and RTOS applications. It boasts a mighty 1 GHz Cortex-A55 CPU and 128 MB of DDR3L-SDRAM. It is easy to use the low-level IO, of which it provides a lot. The board offers connectivity to many ecosystems like Arduino, Qwiic, Grove, mikroBUS, and Pmod. A 1280x720 display is included in the kit. It mounts to the board via a board-to-board connector.

Buy

The Renesas EK-RZ/A3M can be purchased from https://www.renesas.com/en/products/microcontrollers-microprocessors/rz-mpus/ek-rza3m-evaluation-kit-rza3m-mpu.

Benchmark

Name	Avg. CPU	Avg. FPS	Avg. time	render time	flush time
Empty screen	50%	30	23	1	22
Moving wallpaper	56%	30	29	4	25
Single rectangle	8%	30	15	0	15
Multiple rectangles	23%	30	20	1	19
Multiple RGB images	56%	30	24	3	21
Multiple ARGB images	68%	30	27	6	21
Rotated ARGB images	44%	29	27	12	15
Multiple labels	70%	30	31	7	24
Screen sized text	80%	20	48	24	24
Multiple arcs	72%	30	30	7	23
Containers	18%	30	14	4	10
Containers with overlay	90%	30	31	16	15
Containers with opa	25%	30	17	5	12
Containers with opa_layer	37%	29	21	11	10
Containers with scrolling	92%	29	31	15	16
Widgets demo	70%	25	35	16	19
All scenes avg.	53%	28	26	8	18

Specification

CPU and Memory

• MPU: 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A55
• RAM: 128 MB internal DDR3L-SDRAM and 128 KB more internal SRAM,
• Flash: 128 MB external QSPI NAND flash and 32 MB more external QSPI NOR flash
• GPU: None

Display and Touch

• Resolution: 1280x720
• Display Size: 4.3"
• Interface: MIPI
• Color Depth: 16-bit
• Technology: TFT
• DPI: 342 px/inch
• Touch Pad: Capacitive

Connectivity

• Audio codec with i2s and ADC
• Micro-SD Card slot
• USB host or device
• Two 40 pin native pin headers
• MIPI display connector (connects to included display board)
• Ecosystem connectors (Arduino, Qwiic, Grove, mikroBUS, and Pmod)

Getting started

Hardware setup

• Mount the graphics expansion board to the mainboard. Two of the standoffs on the mainboard should be replaced with shorter ones and then the graphics board can be mounted underneath the mainboard. The shorter standoffs can be secured with the included screws.
• Set all the DIP switches to OFF.
• Connect a USB C cable to DEBUG1 (J10) and your PC.

Software setup

• Install RZ FSP v4.2.0 for your OS.
  • On Windows, download setup_rzfsp_v4_2_0_e2s_v2026-07.exe
  • On Linux, download setup_rzfsp_v4_2_0_e2s_v2026-07.run, make it executable and execute it with:

    chmod +x setup_rzfsp_v4_2_0_e2s_v2026-07.run
    ./setup_rzfsp_v4_2_0_e2s_v2026-07.run

  • When prompted, choose "Custom Install".
  • Ensure "Renesas FSP for RZ v4.2.0", "GNU ARM Embedded 13.3-Rel1" and "GCC ARM A-Profile (AArch64 bare-metal) 13.2-Rel1" are enabled

Run the project

• Clone the repository

  git clone https://github.com/lvgl/lv_port_renesas-ek-rz_a3m.git

• Open e2 studio and go to File > Open Projects from File System.... Click "Directory" and navigate to the cloned project and then click "Finish".
• Click the configuration.xml file and press "Generate Project Content".
• Click the hammer to build the project. If it is greyed-out, first single-click the project "lv_ek_rza3m" in the left sidebar and the hammer should become clickable.
• To upload and run the project, click the bug (debug) icon. The debugger will break (stop execution) at the beginning. Click the "Resume" button to continue execution.

Debugging

• In the previous section, the project was run using the debugger. Simply continue using the interactive debugger in e2 studio to debug your program. Set breakpoints, continue, step, etc. as with any other Eclipse-based IDE.

LVGL Pro

RZ FSP 4.2.0 uses LVGL v9.5.0 which you can build your UI for using LVGL Pro.

Check out the official LVGL Pro e2 Studio integration documentation.

Notes

Contribution and Support

If you find any issues with the development board feel free to open an Issue in this repository. For LVGL related issues (features, bugs, etc) please use the main lvgl repository.

If you found a bug and found a solution too please send a Pull request. If you are new to Pull requests refer to Our Guide to learn the basics.