Arduino Zero

The Arduino Zero is a very small ARM development board based on the Atmel SAMD21 family of processors.

Interfaces

Interface Hardware Supported TinyGo Support
GPIO YES YES
UART YES YES
SPI YES YES
I2C YES YES
ADC YES YES
PWM YES YES

Machine Package Docs

Documentation for the machine package for the Arduino Zero

Installing BOSSA

In order to flash your TinyGo programs onto the Arduino Zero board, you will need to install the “bossac” command line utility which is part of the BOSSA command line utilities.

macOS

You can use Homebrew to install the BOSSA command line interface by using the following command:

brew cask install bossa

Or if you prefer, you can also download the installer from https://github.com/shumatech/BOSSA/releases/download/1.9.1/bossa-1.9.1.dmg

Once you have downloaded it, double click on the .dmg file to perform the installation.

Linux

On Linux, install from source:

sudo apt install libreadline-dev libwxgtk3.0-* 
git clone https://github.com/shumatech/BOSSA.git
cd BOSSA
make
sudo cp bin/bossac /usr/local/bin

Windows

You can download BOSSA from https://github.com/shumatech/BOSSA/releases/download/1.9.1/bossa-x64-1.9.1.msi

VERY IMPORTANT: During the installation, you much choose to install into c:\Program Files. The installer might have the wrong path, so edit it to match c:\Program Files.

After the installation, you must add BOSSA to your PATH:

set PATH=%PATH%;"c:\Program Files\BOSSA";

Test that you have installed “BOSSA” correctly by running this command:

bossac --help

Flashing

Once you have installed the needed BOSSA command line utility, as in the previous section, you are ready to build and flash code to your Arduino Zero board.

CLI Flashing

  • Plug your Arduino Zero board into your computer’s USB port.

  • Build and flash your TinyGo code using the tinygo flash command. This command flashes the Arduino Zero with the blinky1 example:

    tinygo flash -target=arduino-zero examples/blinky1

  • The Arduino Zero board should restart and then begin running your program.

Troubleshooting

If you have troubles getting your Arduino Zero board to receive code, try this:

  • Press the “RESET” button on the board two times to get the Arduino Zero board ready to receive code.

  • Now try running the tinygo flash command as above:

    tinygo flash -target=arduino-zero [PATH TO YOUR PROGRAM]

Once you have updated your Arduino Zero board the first time, after that you should be able to flash it entirely from the command line.

Notes

You can use the USB port to the Arduino Zero as a serial port. UART0 refers to this connection.