Seeed Studio Wio Terminal ATSAMD51 Core with Realtek RTL8720DN BLE5.0 Dev Board, Wireless Microcontroller Python Terminal Device Compatible with Raspberry Pi for Arduino, Micropython, and TinyML.

I bought two of these units. The integration of all these features is very attractive.However, this device has a problem with its USB interface. It sometimes refuses to work, and resets and reboots do nothing to fix the problem. I have to reboot the Mac to get the USB interface to work again, and sometimes that doesn't work.I program dozens of devices through the Arduino IDE and have only seen this problem on an Adafruit product, which Adafruit later admitted as having a defect and issued a redesigned version. I suspect the same is happening here.

Let's start out by saying this is a mostly positive review, read on for the upbeat parts. But we're going to begin with the problems. Because if you plan to use this device for anything more than basic education, you're going to run into obstacles.*Software Limitations*Like many low cost open source hardware devices, this one is designed to be compatible with Arduino Studio and relatively code compatible with other devices, which is good. However like many other devices this is achieved by hacking existing open source Arduino libraries to work with the device.In the case of Wio Terminal the libraries are an amalgamation of Arduino, AdaFruit, and Seeed code wrapped around the official Atmel libraries in a spaghettified mess designed to support multiple devices and chipsets, instead of providing each their own bespoke drivers.On firing up the device for the first time, and writing a simple clear screen app to identify the baseline refresh rate I can expect from this device and screen, what did I discover?Wio: 9 fps maximum just clearing the screen on a 200Mhz microprocessor. Are you kidding me?For comparison a 16Mhz Arduino powering the same 9341 lcd screen achieves ~15 fps.(Note: even with the Arduino the AdaFruit derived driver had appalling performance, 15 fps was achieved with a homegrown driver.)With only two days using the device (and admittedly experience writing drivers for the 9341 lcd screen), I was able to write a driver pushing:~40 fps rendering images to the screen (not just clearing).Other peripheral drivers provided for the device appear to have similar issues, layering open source software, on top of other open source software, in an effort to make it work.What does that mean for students and people just tinkering? Not much, the software works, it's just incredibly inefficient.However for anyone attempting to fully utilize (or even moderately utilize) the device, know you will be writing all of your own drivers for the device's hardware. You need to understand this going into it.*Good Hardware*So what about the hardware? The embedded Cortex-M4 includes the optional floating point coprocessing core and can overclock to 200 MHz, which is really nice.Hardware includes Wifi, Bluetooth, Flash RAM (4MB), MicroSD slot (up to 16GB), and more.SPI channels can independently be clocked to match the target peripheral, which is great because some peripherals like the MicroSD do not function above certain speeds.The case.. wow: the case is extremely impressive, small, has a nice heft to it, quality plastic, built-in mounting threads (metal, not plastic), and feels nicely balanced and pleasant to hold (ever pick up an iPhone after holding a cheaper smart phone? Yeah, like that).Here's where the hardware side of things becomes mediocre. The screen is nice and bright, but only supports up to 320x240. Additionally the screen and microprocessor are connected using SPI instead of the faster parallel connection supported by the lcd driver. This requires more processor overhead when rendering, giving you less cycles for actual processing work.The device only has 192KB of ram.. that's it. Let me repeat this.. only 192KB of ram..As in just enough for a framebuffer and no other in-memory data; or enough for other data but limited performance by constantly writing direct to the lcd driver (via SPI).*Summary*Overall though it's a good device. For anyone just connecting Grove modules, wiring up LEDs and switches, or messing around; this device is excellent.For potential power users, read the details and consider the limitations. Personally I still feel like this device is a win, and I'm considering getting another. But your experience will vary based on what you're able or willing to put into the device.

Wio Terminal is great for beginners wanting to explore the field of electronics, programming, automation, prototyping. It is not that expensive and the Grove terminals is a great addition.

This little device is great for displaying information from sensors, as well as allowing you to control them. The libraries for it don't have great compatibility with other libraries, mainly because they add #include's without a #ifndef statement. If you have compiler issues, make sure you don't #include something that's already included in the libraries.

I must have gotten a faulty unit. I'm reading 1.05v from the 3v pins and .33v from the 5v pins to ground. Useless for controlling any external logic devices since the voltage is too low to trigger the signal. Wondered why my relays wouldn't switch. Tested directly from the 40 pin header with extension pins on my fluke 77 multimeter. Too late to exchange it now. Hope you have better luck.