Help with STM32 Board choice

[QMESAR]

Hi Team.

I am a hardcore Microchip PIC fan and are using them for many years ,however I am getting more and more customers pressing for STM32 device and I
see not my way to use the expensive tool Chain/compilers from STM as a learning curve on STM or even to use for prototyping,

What would you recomend as aminimum to have in V8 and a board with some good IO and perhiperal connections which is supported in Flowcode.

Any hints and advise appreciated,

[LeighM]

The Nucleo64 boards are quite cheap, and have pin headers for Arduino shields.
I've used the F4 series boards successfully.
Just choose one that is on the Flowcode 8 target list

[stefan.erni]

Hi QMESAR

I used ones a STM32F469 disco Board with touchscreen. it's about 70 euro.....It's very comfortable to use with flowcode.

http://www.matrixtsl.com/mmforums/viewt ... ilit=disco

regards

Stefan

[QMESAR]

Hi Leigh and Stephan

Thank you for the info I will take alook at the boards you mentioned
much appreciated

[chad]

I have the stm32f446re 180mhz. Great little chip, tons of power. I also have the stm32f303k8 this is the smaller chip. Also great and cheap.
Leigh made a 446re chip target that brings out the other pins besides the arduino headers (works).

Be warned, hardware I2c doesn't work. Some Spi things work, some don't. Most anything that involves timing of any sort are hit and miss. I have no idea about CAN or USB, if I had to guess I would assume they are broken. Components are hit and miss. No way to write to internal flash.
I am at 80 days since first reporting a problem with dmx slave, still no love.
FC support for arm is flakey at best. Not trying to be mean, just a fact. And no one seems to care.
So please get some arms then you can echo my frustrations.

Chad


https://www.amazon.co.uk/STMicroelectro ... +stm32+446

https://www.amazon.co.uk/STM32-NUCLEO-F ... +stm32+446

[QMESAR]

Hi Chad

Thank you for the links. I started to look at the STM datasheets and if it is as difficult to work with them as understanding the Datasheets
I think I stick to PIC32
Any case thanks again and hope you will get helped with your issues.

[Benj]

Hi Chad,

no idea about CAN or USB, if I had to guess I would assume they are broken. Components are hit and miss. No way to write to internal flash.
I am at 80 days since first reporting a problem with dmx slave, still no love.
FC support for arm is flakey at best. Not trying to be mean, just a fact. And no one seems to care.

"Still no love" and "no one seems to care" is a bit harsh seeing as we have multiple times fixed problems for you on request.

In fact we have the UART receive frame error working correctly now just not on the EB2 hardware we are using as a test rig. Working fine on the Nucleo board, so hopefully DMX slave should be working for you with the latest updates.

The ST ARM offering is the latest chip pack we have released and so there are always going to be teething problems. Hopefully we can get them resolved as they are reported.

[chad]

Hi Ben,

"Still no love" and "no one seems to care" is a bit harsh seeing as we have multiple times fixed problems for you on request.

Two things: 446re target (thanks leigh) and the ws2811 that is still flakey. Although I have figured out work arounds.

When you quoted my comments you selectively glossed over a couple of things. i2c is bit banged. That is a big performance hit to a fast chip.
SPI worked on the apa102 component (great!), but doesn't work on the ssd1351spi. That makes for painfully slow display updates. HIt, Miss.
Interrupt timing values don't match FC numbers. No way to write to internal flash... And these are just the things that I have tried so far.

Put yourself in my shoes, How patient would you be? FC isn't cheap, I bought a tool, not a debugging project. The reason I sound like a pain in the *** is because I keep finding problems and 80 days later they (most) still aren't fixed.

In fact we have the UART receive frame error working correctly now just not on the EB2 hardware we are using as a test rig. Working fine on the Nucleo board, so hopefully DMX slave should be working for you with the latest updates.

AWSOME!! I will try it out this weekend and let you know. Thank you!! This is the big one for me.

The ST ARM offering is the latest chip pack we have released and so there are always going to be teething problems. Hopefully we can get them resolved as they are reported.

I get it, but there are still some big issues to be worked out that have been broken for quite a while.

QMESAR: It is just like learning any other new chip. They are cheap and very fast. BTW ST has a fully functional free C IDE.
Give them a shot (hint,hint. the more the merrier) Hell I'll paypal you the $16 to plays with it.

I really like flow code, I just want it to work.

thanks,
chad

[QMESAR]

Hi Chad.

I will give the STM's ago the $16.00 is not the problem ,it is an emotional thing sure it is just as learning any other new chip or technology
I have oreder a Nucleo64 board from Aliexpress only ones that deliver to Russia .

We will see can you help with the link to the free C and IDE tool chain that would help a great deal.

Regards

[chad]

Sure!

https://atollic.com/truestudio/
https://www.st.com/en/development-tools ... ubemx.html

The first is the ide and the second is cube mx. It allows you to set the config registers then send it to the ide.

Chad

[QMESAR]

Thanks a million chad.

[mnf]

I got one of these boardsto try - I'd got a FC licence to try ARM chips way back (and neither of the two boards I had previously were supported - so I've not really tried them or FC's ARM support at all before)

- But my question is how to set the clock speed correctly?

Program options doesn't allow me to set 84MHz directly - (too fast) - but what should I set it too? 8MHZ and then tweak the configure settings? None of the options are immediately obvious (even with the descriptive names enabled).

The good - got a blink up and running in minutes (running FC 7 on an ancient and very slow netbook ) - trying to get a UART working gives me random gibberish at 9600 baud - but I'm guessing this is a timing error caused by above?? (Looking through the forums I'm not sure that the UART does work with the usb port (which would be disappointing) - but the fact that I am getting some output makes me more hopeful!)

Martin

[LeighM]

Hi Martin,
If your board is a Nucleo or Discovery that we support, then you can select the target FCD and this will set the input frequency for you. As I recall it's 8MHz for the Nucleo.
The config dialog then enables you to set the PLLs and processor and peripherals clocks to whatever suits you.
We don't currently have a method to help here.
ST have CubeMX which helps with the complexity of the clock configurations.

The UART should then take care of itself as regards setting up the baud rate configuration.
I've successfully used the Nucleo board UART loopback through the USB virtual com port, so that does work.

Hope that helps,
Leigh

[mnf]

Thanks Leigh,

Setting speed to 8MHz did the trick - and Sudoku solved swiftly and efficiently - and reflected to UART as well

Martin

[chad]

What stm board do you have?

chad

[mnf]

Got a nucleo-64 stm32f401 as recommended above... Seem to get a lot of horsepower for very little cash (compared with Arduino (uno,due etc) - though of course clones are available for tiny prices)

Pleased to get it up and running so quickly and easily (been having some difficulties with some Arduino variants of late) - got an oled (1306) running on i2c as well.

Spent a bit of time looking for hardware i2c - and found an 'initialise' though information doesn't seem to be that readily available - I guess this is just too much of it out there and Google isn't giving me what I wish for.

I couldn't find the correct board when signing up to the mbed website - but very early days (and as mentioned was working on a slooooww computer which made doing anything rather frustrating)

I also notice that Windows has failed to install a driver for the stlink debugger - which looks like a useful feature - so some more work needed there too.

Martin

[LeighM]

Hi Martin,
Glad to hear you have it up and running.
Flowcode I2C support is limited to Software only at the moment on ST ARM,
but it is on my list to add hardware support, hopefully I can get this done in the next week or so.
The ST website has quite a number of free downloads, ST-LINK, USB drivers etc.
Leigh

[chad]

Hardware I2c would be really great!

Thanks

chad

[chad]

QESMAR, Did you get your arm boards?

chad

[QMESAR]

Hi Chad waiting for them from Aliexpress
I will need your help once I have them
Have good one

[chad]

I'm making it up as I go..

The guys are fixing stuff on the arms. They are getting better and better...

chad

[QMESAR]

chad,
Ben and Leigh will fix everything I know them for years ,be sure of that it is only their time is many times very limited but at
the end they fix always every thing

[Alkaline]

Hi everyone

for a new project we would like to try using a st32 microcontroller instead of the classic pic32 we are using now.

Reading the forum a little and checking the various chips that are supported, I identified this model as an ideal candidate
STM32F411CEY6TR or STM32F411VEH6

The protocols that I must use are i2c master (software) and usart (hardware).

reading the various application notes of the st I saw that this family is compatible with
the usb dfu bootloader. Is it possible using their program to load the source generated by flowocode via usb?

Do you recommend other chips?

thank you

[Alkaline]

Hi everyone

for a new project we would like to try using a st32 microcontroller instead of the classic pic32 we are using now.

Reading the forum a little and checking the various chips that are supported, I identified this model as an ideal candidate
STM32F411CEY6TR or STM32F411VEH6

The protocols that I must use are i2c master (software) and usart (hardware).

reading the various application notes of the st I saw that this family is compatible with
the usb dfu bootloader. Is it possible using their program to load the source generated by flowocode via usb?

Do you recommend other chips?

thank you

[LeighM]

Flowcode will directly program via an ST-LINK device,
or the ST UART based bootloader (CLI and GUI) will work with Hex files generated from Flowcode.
The last time I looked there was no easy way of converting Flowcode output to DFU format for the ST USB DFU programmer,
so that has limited use.
It can however be easily used to extract a master image from one board, via USB, and then used to program others via USB.
If that helps.
Leigh