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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : STM32F103C8T6 72MHz 64K flash 20K RAM
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G8JCF Guru  Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
I stumbled across this on eBay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Professional-STM32F103C8T6-ARM -STM32-System-Development-Module-For-Arduino-/311065904789?p t=UK_BOI_Electrical_Components_Supplies_ET&hash=item486cf906 95 Astounding price, GBP 3.85, FREE P&P. Quesions. 1) Has anybody ever used this chip ? 2) What's the development tool for these chips 3) Is this worth a look ? 4) JohnS, U could surely put a Programmer into this wee board 
Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| micronut Newbie  Joined: 03/09/2014 Location: United StatesPosts: 37 |
I haven't used this Arm. You may be able to use Arduino 1.5x if it truly is an Arduino based system. You may use Bossa to upload to it but without any documentation or description this is all guessing. I have a Due and it is faster more memory, pins and power than this one but also much more expensive. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
Peter, Yes I use those boards - cheapest I've bought so far was £3.79 :) To program I use a JTAG device and ARM cross-compilers (just as I use PIC32 cross-compilers) under Linux. The boards provide much more speed, flash & ROM than (say) the USBASP, at more than double the price (still very cheap). In terms of (say) using one as a 'mite programmer the snag is you need a JTAG device to program the STM32. So you would now need a more costly board than USBASP plus the JTAG one. Not silly because you also get a reusable JTAG programmer and potentially experience with STM32. Have a look at the STM32F4 boards and be surprised :) It's boards like those and the USBASP that to me really show what a rip-off FTDI chips are. edit: just realised the boards I've used are more different than I thought (have more pins), such as this The board posted before may need SWD/SWDIO (such using STLink) to program rather than JTAG, but same issue arises. John |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Thanks John Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
They're fun. And you can use the same tools you'd use for RPi as they're all ARM. The little chips don't have enough RAM etc to run Linux, though! The STM32 family and the other ARM devices (RPi, AllWinner, and so many others) leave Microchip rather far behind at the moment as the PIC32MZ is way too rare and expensive. Is a umite32MZ doable soon and cheaply? John |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
[Quote=JohnS] I think we all hope so; imagine MMBasic with CFunctions with 32MZ ! Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
April 2014 was "the date" but 6 more months are gone and they're messing with Harmony when cheap, readily available, silicon should be their focus. H E L L O M I C R O C H I P. G E T W I T H I T. Actually, it would be a start if they replied about documentation errors submitted for their comment. John |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Hi John MCHP had better get a move on ! The net, eBay, seem to be awash with 32 bit ARM modules for silly prices with clock rates that are quite outstanding. The only thing seems to be that the IDE's seem to be a lot more troublesome to acquire/setup compared to just downloading MPLabX. Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| JohnL Senior Member  Joined: 10/01/2014 Location: SeychellesPosts: 128 |
You better do more research on PIC32MZ. Microchip forum etc. Many problems with hardware silicon bugs. More recent evaluation discovery is that operation of internal clock oscillator can be affected by toggling adjacent GPIO pins. You would be spending more time reading errata data sheets than programming. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
Yes, ARM chips are everywhere - in tablets, smartphones, etc. They're not so much silly prices as a reflection of the vast numbers shipped. Volume manufacture = low prices. AllWinner are selling in the hundreds of millions per year. I don't see why you think there's any problem with IDEs. There's a wide choice and they're very functional. I find it hard to see MPLABX as anything but playing catch-up and very late in the day. Many people want java, C++, C, etc (almost no-one uses any form of Basic) and often under Linux so can just run native on the ARM chip. Many cheap boards now have 2GB DDR3 RAM. A reasonable 2GB dev board to start on is cubietruck which like many is dual-cpu. I think Olimex LIME2 is still "only" 1GB RAM. Some are doing embedded so tend to use source-level debug. The open source people usually go with gdb, through Eclipse or the like if they want an IDE. (There are tools vendors for those who prefer to spend money.) John |
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kiiid Guru Joined: 11/05/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 671 |
PIC32MK and PIC32MM are coming. http://rittle.org -------------- |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
I'm not going to hold my breath. What they need to do is stop messing around with Harmony, with proprietary variants of gcc (xc32) and so on, and instead get working silicon out of the door. Oh, and cut the price of starter kits to near zero, same as ST with STM32. With cheap high-performance ARM everywhere Microchip need to focus. Software is not what they do. John |
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| kiiid Guru Joined: 11/05/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 671 |
No one is forcing you to hold your breath. I am just posting the information for someone interested in it http://rittle.org -------------- |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Wonder what it is that MCHP think they have got over the mass tide of ARM based stuff out there ? With 32 bit, it seems like everybody and their granny is producing really powerful stuff, which runs like the clappers and costs next to nothing. Even the development boards from the likes of Freescale and TI are dirt cheap compared to MCHP dev boards. I have to admit that if it wasn't for MMBasic/uMite, I wouldn't have taken a second look at PIC32, I probably would have gone with the flow and tried ARM/Arduino. But at heart I really like the simplicity and immediacy of Basic, and MMBasic was just so easy to get into. I just hope that with CFunctions, that MMBasic will be able to tackle previously 'difficult' application areas. Now if MMBasic and CFunctions were available on an ARM based processor (ARM assembler is PIC) running at 200+ MHz with 256K Flash, 64K Ram, and 32 I/O lines on a PCB with USB for less than GBP20 inc taxes, just how powerful/interesting would that be ! Has anybody tried porting MMBasic to an ARM processor ? Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| JohnL Senior Member Joined: 10/01/2014 Location: SeychellesPosts: 128 |
Peter, Not sure what your knowledge/understanding is of ARM processors? ARM license CPU core/instruction set to all other different manufacturers. However, different manufacturers build and implement their own versions (mostly not compatible) of internal peripheral functionality (GPIO, ADC, TIMERS, INTERRUPT HANDLING etc) in their processor. To program ARM internal peripherals is usually much more complex than PIC32. STMicroelectronics has a very good and popular range of ARM M0,1,2,3 and 4 processors, including some extremely cheap development boards directly from STM. http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/SC959/SS1532/LN184 8/PF252419# US$14.58 for very popular Discovery 407 board. STM also have some very cheap Arduino format ARM NUCLEO boards. http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/SC959/SS1532/LN184 7/PF260320?s_searchtype=partnumber US$10.12. I think that someone in Germany may have tried to port MMbasic to STM Discovery F407 board, others may know more? I think Geoff did comment about STM processors at some stage, do a search. I also think that Microchip may have now lost the race in 32 bit processor market. |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Hi JohnL I was an original owner of ACORN machines, way back starting from when 6502's reigned supreme ! I do understand about how ARM operates - my sister lives not more than 10 mins walk from ARM HQ in Cambridge, her husband is in the s/w business, and I have long followed Acorn Risc Machines !! I came across the Coridium Basic compiler which certainly looks very powerful although it does lack 64 bit integers, what do U think of Coridium ? I was just interested to know if MMBasic had been ported to ARM - any version. Perhaps it is time to roll up one's sleeves ! Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| JohnL Senior Member Joined: 10/01/2014 Location: SeychellesPosts: 128 |
Peter, I am aware of but not tried Coridium, was considering the ARM DIP chip at one stage, but with only 4K of RAM I thought it had limitations. Another Basic interpreter that runs on number of different platforms including ARM STMF4?, Raspberry Pi, PC WIN and Linux. is COREBASIC from SOLDERCORE developed by Rowley Associates Limited in UK. Supports networking, colour graphics and has many drivers for external hardware and Arduino shields. I have not used it personally and don't know much more. http://soldercore.com/software/corebasic/ They also have hardware boards based on Arduino platform. Looking at soldercore website all hardware is sold out? But hardware boards are listed on reseller sites and seem expensive? If you want to pay about $250 there is a basic compiler from Mikroelektronika with lifetime upgrades and support, supporting large range of STM and TI 32bit ARM processors. But object oriented format is exactly the same as C, so may as well learn C syntax variation. I started with basic but have moved to C. Doesn't produce highly optimized code, but IDE is relatively easy to use and has in circuit debugging and very good Library and user contributed code support. They have development boards and programmers. Compiler is fully compatible with STM discovery F407 board, USB ST-Link. http://www.mikroe.com/mikrobasic/arm/ From what I can see interest in BASIC is now very limited, mainly older generation that was introduced to BASIC computing in 1970s/80s. I started with early evaluation boards at University in mid 1970's, SC/MP toggle switches and LED's,8080,6502,Z80,6800, Intel 8052-Basic (8K) chip etc., have watched many BASIC products and web sites dwindle away over the years. Arduino has made C programming much easier for beginners, look at the following (over million posts on their forum) and huge software/hardware support. Some think that Python may be a new Basic for 21st century?? What do Geoff and Kiiid(Kon) think about BASIC on ARM platform? |
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| kiiid Guru Joined: 11/05/2013 Location: United KingdomPosts: 671 |
I don't know about BASIC as I am mostly focused on hardware. From memory someone had done it to some extent not long ago. My cheap DIP16 with powerful ARM piece will be out very soon together with the dev board for it, and if Geoff or anyone else has interest in porting the BASIC on it, let me know and I am more than happy to supply them with samples even right now. http://rittle.org -------------- |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3677 |
There have been threads about STM32 / MMBasic, like this and this or this John |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Personally, I don't care about video, keyboards, USB. I just want a faster/bigger/more capable Micromite for the lowest cost; and from what little I can see/understand that means ARM based chips rather than PIC chips ! Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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