One of the challenges with using the Z-Wave developers kit is trying to figure out which pin is connected to what. Every pin of the ZGM130S can perform multiple functions but some pins are best used for certain things. This guide provides general recommendations, but these are not hard-and-fast rules. The ZGM130S provides a great deal of flexibility so feel free to explore the many options each pin and peripheral has to offer. I’m hoping I can guide you with some initial suggestions but feel free to delve into the details to find your ideal solution.

This guide is a compilation of a number of documents and while I’ve been thorough, I could easily have made a typo here or there. Please use the online documentation as the official reference and send me an email pointing out my error and I’ll fix it. I couldn’t possibly include every feature for every pin but the details are available in the reference documents below. The Decoder Ring below is an overview of the most commonly used features. The table below contains a lot of information, so you’ll need to view it on a computer with a big screen.

Reference Documents

ZGM130S        ZGM130S Datasheet – See section 6 for the pin definitions
EFR32XG13    Gecko Family Reference Manual – Each peripheral is detailed here
UG381             ZGM130S Zen Gecko DevKit Users Guide – Section 3 describes connectors

ZGM130S GPIO Decoder Table

ZGM130S	GPIO port as described in the ZGM130S data sheet
Pin #	GPIO pin number of the ZGM130S SIP package
BRD4202A	Zen Gecko Developers kit board for the ZGM130S
BRD8029A	Button/LED board plugged into the WSTK EXP header for the sample apps
WSTK EXP	Pin number of the main WSTK board expansion header
WSTK	Main developers kit board with USB, LCD and Segger J-link debugger
	The Pxx pins are the holes across the long side of the board
	The Fxx pins are secondary functions that typically connect to the isolators
MiniDBG	Small 20 pin ribbon cable used to connect WSTK to a target DUT
ALT FUNCS	Alternate functions the GPIO can perform. All GPIOs can be simple digital 1/0s.
	Some pins have special analog or peripheral functions.
Comments	Brief comments describing special functions of the GPIO

General Purpose IOs – Use these for your application first

ZGM 130S	Pin #	BRD 4202A	BRD 8029A	WSTK EXP	WSTK	Mini DBG	ALT FUNCs	Comments
PD10	27	LED_R P201-35			P32			LED ON=low, Pullup Ideal for PWM
PD11	28	LED_G P201-37			P34			LED ON=low, Pullup
PD12	29	LED_B P200-3			P36			LED ON=low, Pullup
PC6	58	P201-4 P200-29		EXP4	P1 F16			Easy to use with WSTK since they are on EXP
PC7	59	P201-6		EXP6	P3
PF3	5	P201-13 P200-16	LED1	EXP13	P10			JTAG_TDI
PF4	6	P201-11 P200-23	LED0	EXP11	P8
PF6	8	P201-7 P200-25	BUTN0	EXP7	P4 F12
PC8	60	P201-8 P200-28		EXP8	P5 F15
PC9	61	P201-10	SW	EXP10	P7
PB14	46	P201-30			P27			LFXO – 32Khz osc crystal for accurate time
PB15	47	P201-32			P29			LFXO
PD9	26	P201-33			P30
PF5	7	P201-28 P200-24			P25 F11
PD13	30	P201-34 P200-31			P31 F18		OPA1P	Use for Analog functions
PD15	34	P201-38			P35		OPA1N
PA2	37	P201-3 P200-21	LED2	EXP3	P0 F8		OPA0P
PA4	39	P201-17			P14		OPA0N
PA5	40	P201-19 P200-18			P16 F5			VCOM_ENB Must be 1 for WSTK to pass USART0 to USB

Special Function Pins – Use these for their alternate function

ZGM 130S	Pin #	BRD 4202A	BRD 8029A	WSTK EXP	WSTK	Mini DBG	ALT FUNCs	Comments
PC10	62	P201-15	BUTN2	EXP15	P12		EM4WU12 I2C1_SDA	EM4WU pins are the ONLY pins that will wakeup from EM4
PC11	63	P201-16	BUTN3	EXP16	P13		I2C1_SCL	Use for I2C, will NOT wakeup from EM4
PD14	31	P201-36 P200-30			P33 F17		OPA1 EM4WU4
PF7	9	P201-9 P200-26	BUTN1	EXP9	P6 F13		EM4WU1
PA3	38	P201-5 P200-22	LED3	EXP5	P2 F9		VDAC0 OPA0 EM4WU8
PB11	41	P201-21 P200-34			P18 F21		OPA2P
PB12	42	P201-23 P200-33			P20 F20	10	OPA2	PTI_DATA Future Packet Trace debug
PB13	45	P201-25 P200-32			P22 F19	9	OPA2N EM4WU9	PTI_SYNC Always wire the 2 PTI pins on the ZG14 modem chip to GPIOs on your host CPU

Fixed Function Pins – Reserved for debug

ZGM 130S	Pin #	BRD 4202A	BRD 8029A	WSTK EXP	WSTK	Mini DBG	ALT FUNCs	Comments
PA0	35	P201-12 P200-19		EXP12	P9 F6	5	USART0	VCOM_TX WSTK->ZGM130
PA1	36	P201-14 P200-20		EXP14	P11 F7	4	USART0	VCOM_RX ZGM130->WSTK
PF2	4	P201-31 P200-15			P28 F2	6	EM4WU0	SWO JTAG_TDO
PF0	2	P201-27 P200-14			P24 F1	8	BOOTTX	SWCLK JTAG_TCK
PF1	3	P201-29 P200-13			P26 F0	7	BOOTRX	SWDIO JTAG_TMS
RST_N	15	P200-17			F4 SW102	3		RESET button next to EXP header
ANT	23	SMA or PCB						Radio Antenna Move cap R2 for PCB

Power Pins

ZGM 130S	Pin #	BRD 4202A	BRD 8029A	WSTK EXP	WSTK	Mini DBG	ALT FUNCs	Comments
VSS GND	1,10,11, 12,13,14, 16,17,18, 19,20,21, 22,24,25, 32,33,43, 48,49,51, 53,54,55, 64					2		Ground 0 Volts
AVDD	44							Analog Power 1.8-3.8V
1V8	50							Leave unconnected
VREG VDD	52							DCDC Reg input Tie to AVDD 2.4V min for DCDC
DECO UPLE	56							No-Connect
IOVDD	57							Digital IO Power 1.62V-VREGVDD AVDD>=IOVDD
					VAEM	1		DUT Power

EXP Port on the WSTK

BRD8029A	WSTK	Pin #	Pin #	WSTK	BRD8029A
	GND	1	2	VMCU	VMCU
LED2	P0 (PA2)	3	4	P1(PC6)
LED3	P2(PA3)	5	6	P3(PC7)
BUTN0	P4(PF6)	7	8	P5(PC8)
BUTN1	P6(PF7)	9	10	P7(PC9)	SW Pull up/dn
LED0	P8(PF4)	11	12	P9(PA0)
LED1	P10(PF3)	13	14	P11(PA1)
BUTN2	P12(PC10)	15	16	P13(PC11)	BUTN3
	BoardID_SCL	17	18	+5V	NC
	BoardID_SDA	19	20	3V3	BRDID PWR

Legend:
WSTK = hole name (ZGM130 GPIO)
EX: WSTK P100 pin 16 is hole P13, ZGM130S GPIO PC11, Button 3 on the BRD8029A
BRD8029A is the Button/LED board. Functionality is:
LEDs are ON when driven high
BUTN pins are pulled up and go low when the button is pressed
The SW can pull the pin either up or down depending on the slide setting
left/on is 1, right/off is 0 thru 1MOhm resistors
The VMCU powers the LEDs/Buttons but the board ID is powered via pin 20
Schematic is in Simplicity Studio

Mini-Simplicity Debug header: Top View

Name	Pin #	Pin #	Name
VAEM (3V3)	1	2	GND
RESET_N	3	4	VCOM_RX (PA1)
VCOM_TX (PA0)	5	6	SWO(PF2)
SWDIO(PF1)	7	8	SWCLK(PF0)
PTI_SYNC(PB13)	9	10	PTI_DATA(PB12)

On the DUT board with the ZGM130S on it, connect VCOM_RX to PA1 and VCOM_TX to PA0. The header is a 0.05” pitch 10 pin header. Typically use a Samtec FTSH-110 but to make the pads even smaller use just the pads for a thru-hole connector. See my post “700 series Debug Header” from October 2019 for more details on the debug header.

Recommendations

Remember that the GPIOs in all the Wireless Gecko chips from Silicon Labs are very flexible and most peripheral functions can be routed to almost any IO pin. That said, there are some pins that have fixed functions and some pins are best at certain other functions. Let’s start with the pins you can’t use.

Power Pins

Obviously, the power pins have to be connected to the proper voltage. The ZGM130 has a lot of ground pins so make sure every one of them is connected to a solid ground. The voltages for the power pins have a few rules but in most cases you’ll tie AVDD and VREGVDD to the same power source of 3.3V. The on-chip DC to DC regulator allows a wide voltage range on VREGVDD so there is some additional flexibility which requires careful consideration. But for most applications, tie these two power pins directly to the battery. Most of the time IOVDD is also tied to the battery though depending on other chips in your system you might need an LDO to keep the IOs at the proper voltage.

Debug Pins

The next set of pins you should not use for GPIOs are the debug pins. All ten IO pins on the Mini-Simplicity header should be wired up as shown in the table above. The UART pins are very important to print out debug information while the chip is running. The advantage here is that you can see things happening in real-time without using a scope or logic analyzer. And you can easily enable/disable blocks of debug statements as needed. The sample apps print all sorts of debug information so you’ll want to do the same in your code. The UART defaults to only 115200 baud but it’s easy to increase it up to roughly 1Mbaud to reduce the time impact of printing debug messages. Also, keep the messages short or else they may impact the timing so much that your code will fail. If you’re really in a pinch for one more IO, you could use the SWO or VCOM_RX pins as you probably don’t need them.

Special Function Pins

A number of pins have specific functions especially for certain analog functions. The ADC/DAC only have their primary and alternate IOs though you can route them thru the ABUS. Only a few of these pins can wake the chip from sleeping in EM4. Be very careful and utilize these pins for buttons or sensors that need to wake the chip up.

General Purpose IOs  

The rest of the pins are available for any purpose. Most of the pins can be any digital IO function. Some pins are handy because of their connection on the DevKit. There are three IOs connected to an RGB LED on the 4202 board. These are really handy to visually observe PWM waveforms based on the color of the LED. The pins that are routed to the EXP header on the WSTK are easy to connect to a proto board. Be careful to avoid using PA5 as that is connected to the VCOM enable pin on the WSTK. PA5 has to be high to route the debug UART data to the USB bus. But this is a restriction only when using the DevKit 4202 board. If connecting to your own PCB via the Mini-Simplicity header you can freely use PA5.

Conclusion

The ZGM130S is a flexible chip with plenty of compute power, RAM and Flash. The GPIOs can largely be routed from any peripheral to any IO though there are some restrictions. The secret decoder ring given here maps out which pin can do what and which ones should be used for your application. This is only a guide and the chip has many more features than I can describe here. Refer to the Reference Documents for more in depth knowledge.