gbulmer
Moderator
Rod - I dropped a PDF of an STM32F103 board I did last year, called piXe-2, into my github gbulmer/openstm32hw repo. We have made DIY PCB's.
It shows the difference between Eagles' autorouter and hand routing. The autorouted MM4 has about 150 vias (a guess), the hand routed piXe-2 has 28 (I think); a lot less drilling.
CNCaddict
Member
Yes, what Lorenson said!! It would be great if I could just go to the dropdown menu and select "discovery F4" and then program away. If this were done you would get a bunch of folks jumping on board. The F4 chip just feels a lot less accessible than the other 32bit arduino lookalikes. Also, it would make the Due look slow in comparison...which can only be a good thing for maple.
siy
Member
gbulmer, F4 Discovery started appearing in local stores for more or less reasonable price (about $30 retail). Not as cheap as in on-line stores, but this is still very attractive price (closest alternative - OLIMEXINO-STM32 - is about $45!). Last time I've visited one of the stores peoples were asking for F4 Discovery 3 or 4 times during 10 minutes while I was in store. I had good chance to see how big interest to this board is. As a consequence I got the conclusion that support for this board in libmaple and IDE is extremely important.
bubulindo
Member
@siy
I think you are right.
I've seen people extending the support (although it is far easier there) of the Arduino to non-Arduino chips such as the 1284, 644 and some tinys.
The next iteration of the Arduino with the ARM chips will also provide support for two families of chips.
So for the Maple, or libmaple in this case, actually providing support for popular boards would be a very big plus in getting people onboard. Maybe even, later on, upgrading to a Maple board.
bubulindo
Member
So far it's related to rcc and the board leds.
One thing though, I'm trying to communicate through the USB interface (with the main example that uses SerialUSB), but the Discovery doesn't come up as a Serial Port (with both USB ports connected to the computer).
Have you had any luck with this?
As clearly stated here http://forums.leaflabs.com/topic.php?id=1268&page=2#post-7751, I have no integrated USB support to the F4 libmaple port, yet.
Hi,
I'm Tsvetan from Olimex and I just saw what ala42 did.
We have STM32-P407 board which is overwhelmed with features http://www.olimex.com/dev/stm32-p407.html
And we are working now on smaller F4 board I though it would be good idea if we share what we do with the Maple community and maybe we can work out something together?
F4-Discovery board is great but as probably most of you guess it's sponsored by ST and sold under the cost, for comparison just check the price of board and the F4 chip itself MOUSER sells F4-Discovery at lower price than the F4 chip, this of course if good to attract people to test F4 but really twist the market.
The new F4 board will be open hardware so we will put on our web the CAD files and everything related to the manufacturing so anyone could upgrade later.
So let me tell you what we are about:
STM32F407ZGT6 IC with 1024KB Flash 196KB RAM
on the left side of the board:
USB mini device
USB host
USB-OTG
on the right side of the board:
micro SD card
RS232 driver and DB9connector
UEXT connector for our modules http://www.olimex.com/dev/OTHER/UEXT.pdf
on top and bottom:
double row header for all STM32 pins which are not used
on the board will have power supply managment, couple of LEDs and buttons
I'm not sure yet but probabably we will leave on the board SDRAM 32MB IC footprint but will not populate it in the basic version, so if somebody is with lack of memory can order this board also with 32MB of RAM
generally board which have some basic features and allow lot to be upgraded on lately
the layout will be not Arduino compatible but stack-on Arduino like adapter board could be easily done
I would like to hear your feedback!
siy
Member
Presence of DB9 connector as well as RS232 at development boards is thing which I didn't understand. Anyone actually uses it? :)
Tsvetan, what kind of SDRAM do you plan to use? Perhaps you can tell exact part number?
I'm working on similar board and one of the ideas is to use PSRAM (I even bought few chips for prototyping) since regular SRAM chips have much smaller capacity and much more expensive, but they are in BGA package which are not very simple to use in DIY boards (even with fine pitch and solder mask). Also, do you plan to support USB HS? If so, perhaps you can tell which USB PHY do you plan to use?
P.P.S. I'm just hobbyist and can't (and don't want/need to) compete with Olimex :)
siy
Member
Tsvetan, I like the idea of UEXT connector and thinking about adding them to my boards, but I'm concerned about one thing: many (if not all) SPI implementations at cheap LCD/OLED display modules need additional pin (named R/S, A0, D/C, etc.) which selects data/command registers (sometimes it's called "4-wire serial interface"). But UEXT does not provide such a capability and there is no spare pins in socket to use for this purpose. Perhaps it worth to add couple of pins and assign one as "GPIO"? Other pin can serve as voltage from external source. This would allow to use UEXT for modules which can serve as power source (solar panels, for example). The main board can use this voltage as a source for the internal voltage regulator and provide 3.3V to all modules.
bubulindo
Member
Well... while you're asking... :)
Including a battery so that the backup registers and rtc remain powered would be a nice addition. That is something that is "missing" in the olimexino, but there is no space to put it either, maybe on this board, this can be achieved?
I think the DB9 and RS232 aren't really needed since they aren't that used anymore. However, I feel that a some hardware to complement the Ethernet functions on the F407 would come in really handy.
I'm not too crazy about the double header either, but if you launch the board with a development shield at the same time that people can use to break out the pins, it would be a plus. Not all people have shops where they can buy a couple of connectors and flat cable. And buying those in small quantities isn't that easy or cheap either. On that note, if somehow the new board had the F4Discovery footprint (or pin placement), you could make a few more sales on that shield. I'm getting veroboard and some connectors in a few days to do something like this.
@siy @bubulindo DB9 indeed is big and heavy and if someone needs DB9 we have small UEXT-to-DB9 module
Ethernet connector is good and useful indeed but again will mess with "shields" placed on top of this board and will rise the final price above EUR 30 target we have for this board release, perhaps Ethernet shield option is more flexible solution?
sorry for the RAM I was confused the F4 have no SD RAM controller and the PSRAMs are slow so the RAM option will be 512KB SRAM as on STM32-P407
the HS USB external PHY will also get this board out of the target so we will stay with the on-board full speed USB
about UEXT the best to stay compatible is to use small microcontroller which to use as I2C to parallel port expander
for instance on our new UEXT modules we put PIC16F1503 $0.60 microcontroller to interface with GPIOs etc.
@bubulindo RTC backup battery is good idea! we will add, of course we will have the board and the Arduino topshield adapter ready at the same time
this board will be so powerful that with the new MOD-VGA we work on which is Gameduino with extra RAM and PS2 keyboard it may be complete Single board computer for 3D printers as will be able to interpret G codes and will be able to connect to color VGA and keyboard?
siy
Member
@olimexino, take a look at http://www.terraelectronica.ru/files/TE-STM32F217x_v100.pdf. Used chip is not the fastest one (there are faster chips in this series). Taking into account support from the FMSC controller (burst modes and such), it should be fast enough.
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