Microchip’s SAME51 Touch Curiosity is a low cost evaluation kit equipped with ATSAME51J20A MCU, a touch-screen TFT display and an onboard debugger for quick product development. This kit is designed to aim applications requiring touch input and clear display such as smart appliances, vehicle climate control or industrial embedded devices that require CAN, Ethernet or USB support.

The evaluation kit adopts the 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F MCU which has a maximum frequency of 120MHz. Other relevant features include a Floating Point Unit (FPU), a Memory Protection Unit (MPU), 256KB SRAM and a 32-channel Direct Memory Access Controller (DMAC).

SAME51 Touch Curiosity front (left) and back (right)
(click images to enlarge)

According to Microchip, the eval kit has an Integrated Peripheral Touch Controller processed by the MCU which completely handles the touch user interface without and the rendering required for the display. 

SAME51 Touch Curiosity Interfaces (Left) and Block Diagram (Right)
(click images to enlarge)

Furthermore, Microchip provides support to implement 2D touch, basic gestures, and even machine learning for gesture recognition to improve the user interface experience. The board contains an Onboard Nano debugger for simple programming and debugging.  The board is supported by the MPLAB X IDE and MPLAB Harmony v4 software development framework. Microchip ensures that no external tools are needed to program the device.  

SAME51 Touch Curiosity Touch & Gesture Support 
(click images to enlarge)

• Processor System:
  • ATSAME51J20A MCU (Cortex-M4F CPU up to 120 MHz)
  • Floating Point Unit
  • Embedded Trace Module (ETM)
  • 8-Zone Memory Protection Unit (MPU)
• Memory/storage:
  • 256KB SRAM
  • 8MB QSPI Flash
• Display:
  • 480×320 pixel TFT display w/ 16-bit color
• I/O:
  • 1x Virtual COM port
  • On-board CAN-FD transceiver 
• Debugger:
  • On-Board debugger w/ LEDs for status/power
  • 1x Logic Analyzer (DGI GPIO)
• Other features:
  • 32 Channel DMA controller
  • 8x 16-bit Timers/Counter
  • Cryptography support (AES 256, TRNG, RSA, ECC) 
• Power:
  • 3.6V USB powered
  • 500mA maximum output current 
• Operating temperature:
  • -40°C to 125°C
• Dimensions – 101.6 x 101.6mm

Further information

The SAME51 Touch Curiosity Kit is listed for $117.83 on Mouser’s website. The eval-kit seem to be out of stock as of the date of this publication, however, they can be backordered. They are expected to be replenished in May 2022.