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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : ARMMITE H7 not seeing much...

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Tinine
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Joined: 30/03/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 04:43pm 08 Apr 2021
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I have decided to seriously consider this as the main CPU for my distributed system. I have had one for a while but was too swamped with workload to really spend time with it.

Just been reading the old threads....man, a lot of development went into this thing but I'm not seeing much mention of it.

So, the speed and the I/O are impressive but of paramount importance to me is robustness.

My only questions are about what I consider "nice-to-haves" and these are:

1)Display
2)Touch screen
3)SD card

Reading through the history, these 3 items appear to have needed much attention. Are they now considered to be reliable?

Other questions:
I don't have my Nucleo board with me to test but I do remember that; after cycling the power, the firmware was lost and I had to re-load the bin file each time. Is this because I didn't do anything with jumpers?

JLCPCB: To ensure future board availabilty, can I simply send ST's board files to JLCPCB to get copies?

Cheers,

Craig
Edited 2021-04-09 02:44 by Tinine
 
panky

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Joined: 02/10/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 1094
Posted: 04:51am 09 Apr 2021
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Craig,

I have one (Nucleo H743) connected to Peter's Backpack - the mid project PCB that has the RasPi header for the 4" ILI9481 LCD which I have connected.

It seems solid and touch certainly works fine although I have not used it much, other than for testing software versions.

A nice feature is the drag-n-drop ability to perform firmware upgrades via the ST-LINK board which is part of the Nucleo.

The downside of the Backpack is that with an LCD connected you now have a 3 PCB sandwich with one USB connection to the Backpack to power it and the LCD and a second USB connection to the ST-LINK connector on the Nucleo for firmware upload and terminal interface.

I am running 5.05.07 which I think is close to the latest firmware. With my standard setup, the firmware has never required reloading despite many power cycles.

Like you, I really like this chip and would love to see many of the CMM2 features that are in it's bigger brother ported to this version (beyond my capabilities and certainly Peter's prerogative).

I understand there are quite a few folks who are using the SSD1963 based LCD's without any issues now - perhaps they may care to comment?

It should be possible to do firmware upgrades direct using BOOT0 and BOOT1 as in the CMM2 and thus do away with the ST-LINK board. This would then perhaps open up the option to design a single board platform for the chip with just LCD's as piggybacks.

Doug.
Edited 2021-04-09 14:51 by panky
... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!
 
panky

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Joined: 02/10/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 1094
Posted: 05:15am 09 Apr 2021
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Further to my response above, Peter's Extreme144 Backpack might form a good concept template for a H743ZIT6 backpack.

I am going to have a play around to see if I can come up with something.

Doug.
... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!
 
Tinine
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Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 05:39am 09 Apr 2021
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Hi Doug.

I have been poring over this documentation all darned night, including the Nucleo stuff.

It's bordering on criminal that this product is not all-the-rage in the MCU world.

I want to make a SBC solution; a main board but with a header for SSD1963 etc. I have an enclosure, in-hand that will house these beautifully.

I am standardizing on Tibbit blocks, existing products and also custom blocks, using their bare shells. The Tibbit blocks will be on free-standing carrier boards and considering the I/O count/density of the CPU module, employ cat5 cables/connectors for interfacing. Color-coded cables for DINs, DOUTs, AN, etc.

Get rid of the Ethernet, ST-Link, Arduino headers, etc.

Gonna be playing with this stuff, starting today  

Cheers,

Craig
 
panky

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Posted: 05:58am 09 Apr 2021
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Can you expand on the Tibbit Block interface? Do you envisage RJ-45 connectors on the main PCB to link to external Tibbit Blocks? If so, how many digital, analogue,I2C, SPI - ie. how many of each type on the main PCB?

What is the cable run distance from the main PCB to the Tibbit Blocks? If reasonably short (say less than 300mm) then 2mm or 2.54mm pitch like these JST style connectors are much more compact (these are the little monkeys you see inside TVs, video recorders etc.) These are cheap to buy and you can get cables with pre-crimped connectors in all colours or roll your own.

D.
... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!
 
Tinine
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Joined: 30/03/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 06:14am 09 Apr 2021
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  panky said  Can you expand on the Tibbit Block interface? Do you envisage RJ-45 connectors on the main PCB to link to external Tibbit Blocks? If so, how many digital, analogue,I2C, SPI - ie. how many of each type on the main PCB?

What is the cable run distance from the main PCB to the Tibbit Blocks? If reasonably short (say less than 300mm) then 2mm or 2.54mm pitch like these JST style connectors are much more compact (these are the little monkeys you see inside TVs, video recorders etc.) These are cheap to buy and you can get cables with pre-crimped connectors in all colours or roll your own.

D.


Not sure yet regarding on-board/external but I'm talking industrial environment. The cable runs are typically short but a typical maintenance guy would not fare very well with those cables/connectors  

Cheers,

Craig
 
Tinine
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Joined: 30/03/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 06:22am 09 Apr 2021
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Something along these lines
 
Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 3422
Posted: 10:42am 09 Apr 2021
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Hi Tinine,

I have no experience in this field, but I would be scared to use CAT5/6 cable for connecting Tibbit modules to the host CPU. The Tibbit modules have a variety of interfaces, ranging from discrete IO to TTL UART to I2C to SPI.

Of these, only TTL UART is robust when using a MODBUS protocol or similar. The others rely on bus integrity on a hardware level.

The RJ45 connector system is designed for ethernet. And ethernet has a robust protocol layer on top of the hardware layer. So mechanical vibrations and shocks (very common in industry applications) that would cause temporary contact problems, will be absorbed by the robust software layer when using ethernet.

If this happens with I2C or SPI ....

In other words, how reliable is the ethernet connector pair under mechanical stress.
Can you be absolutely sure that you get no glitches on interface.

Or should you use something like a DB9 connector.
PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS
 
Tinine
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Joined: 30/03/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 11:10am 09 Apr 2021
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Hi Volhout

Thanks to you and Doug for throwing out these questions because I want to be sure of everything.

I wasn't so sure about Ethernet cabling, few years ago but it has pretty much taken over in industrial controls.
Take a look at EtherCAT.

The only reason I don't want EtherCAT is because of the complexity and lack of compatibility with most of the machines that I retrofit.

Mikroe has a Click module to extend SPI to 1200m @2MHz and it also uses Ethernet cabling.

According to Jan Axelson (serial port complete, book), SPI is good for 3m. I would probably not go more than 250mm.

With I2C, I am looking at incorporating a range extender on the main board, along with a standalone watchdog and a couple of LS7366R devices for quadrature encoders.

Just throwing ideas around atm. All input is appreciated.

Cheers,

Craig
Edited 2021-04-09 21:11 by Tinine
 
Tinine
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Joined: 30/03/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 12:27pm 09 Apr 2021
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I found a vibration test report:


ntp07---ethercon-cat6a (1).pdf

 
Tinine
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Joined: 30/03/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1646
Posted: 02:12pm 09 Apr 2021
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Snob at the pub:"I write process-control code using Structured Text"

Us:"Yeah, BASIC is what we use as well"

PLC Languages  
 
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