New STM32F4's and New STM32F4 Discovery development boards

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New STM32F4's and New STM32F4 Discovery development boards

(14 posts) (6 voices)

Started 2 years ago by gbulmer
Latest reply from gbulmer

gbulmer
Moderator

ST Micro announced volume production and two new STM32 Discovery boards for STM32F429/439, STM32F427/437 microcontrollers, running at 180MHz, and STM32F401 running at 80MHz. The STM32F401 comes in a 48/49 pin QFN package, but not LQFP, so it won't fit on the Orone-mni :-(

ST Micro's new Discovery boards show off some of those MCU's, the 32F401CDISCOVERY and the 32F429IDISCOVERY

The 32F429IDISCOVERY looks 'killer'. It has a 2.4" QVGA TFT LCD and an external 64 Mbits SDRAM. Though the 32F401CDISCOVERY looks very good too. Future are listing the 32F401CDISCOVERY, but have no stock. I haven't found anyone listing the 32F429IDISCOVERY.

A bit more info at my blog

Posted 2 years ago #
spas
Member

These Discovery boards are one of my favorites. There is a hell of a lot for your money on the board and the great thing is no crappy Arduino connector spacing. I would really like to use the Maple IDE to program them. I'll just have to stick with Coocox ide and Windows for now.

Looks like another microcontroller board for the collection.

Posted 2 years ago #
joyzhou
Member

spas - Is coocox easy to configure and to use?
I bought a stm32f4discovery board (previous version)
and am looking for a suitable environment / templet.

Posted 2 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

Folks, there is a more complete user manual for the STM32F429:
http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/active/cn/resource/technical/document/user_manual/DM00093903.pdf

which gives more information than the databrief on the board, including schematics.

Posted 2 years ago #
spas
Member

Joyzhou - I found CoIDE ok. Put it this way, its free. Just down load it and see how it feels for you. The IDE caters for quite a few ARM processors. There are tutorials to follow with regards to its operation. I downloaded the STlink driver and started to play. Its a shame they haven't done a Linux version and I not sure if they will.

Posted 2 years ago #
joyzhou
Member

spas - Thanks a lot for your infomation.
I am afraid they do not have plans for a linux version
after I read some words posted by one of its developers
on a chinese forum.

Posted 2 years ago #
spas
Member

That is the bummer. It is one of the few reasons I still keep a machine with windows on it. The IDE handles ok with the bonus of being able to program quite a few ARM devices.

Posted 2 years ago #
mlundinse
Member

The 32F429IDISCOVERY looks 'killer' for sure but there are very few I/O pins free. Most are tied up by the display and SRAM chip. So this board is for applications with fairly limited I/O requirements timers and ADC but that benefits from the extrenal SRAM and the display.

Posted 2 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

mlundinse - "but there are very few I/O pins free"

Good comment.

I SWAG about 40 for the LCD, about 40 for the SRAM, + some for USB, I2C, buttons, so about 100 used?
It's a 144pin part, with a (theoretical) 114 GPIOs. So under 20 free?

Though, an LCD touch screen and 8MiB of RAM + I2C, SPI and a few GPIO pins is quite a lot of projects :-)

Posted 2 years ago #
mlundinse
Member

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101687782/STM32F429Discovery%20board%20io.pdf

Posted 2 years ago #
ala42
Member

I counted 28 for the LCD in total, some of these are multiple use, 38 for SRAM. 20 are free.

Posted 2 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

Hey! Pretty good SWAG, huh?-)

More free pins than an Arduino, cheaper, ~10x faster, 64x more Flash, 4096x more RAM, and LCD touch screen, 3axis gyro, one more LED, and a spare button.
Not mentioning, more I2C, SPI, CAN, UASRT, DAC, ADC, and hardware debug.

What a deal !-)

Posted 2 years ago #
hihohoho
Member

Hello all,

Farnell (uk) have got these for £16 (£24 incl. post and vat) and I'm tempted to get one, but...

How is it programmed? I presume not with Maple IDE and not with arduino like language. I've used pic and other chips in the past with assembly etc, but I've got kinda fond of the Arduino way of doing things; quick projects without getting bogged down reading tech specs.

I've got a mac ('07 intel 10.6), and the maple is nicely setup with xcode etc, but the software ST say works won't work 'cos it's for windows. Anyone got this to work with a Mac? gbulmer links somewhere to st/link2 software and it all looks doable, but I'm a little confused as to how I go about writing software for this? What compiler/linker and where do I get it? Could I use the compiler buried within the maple directories? How to do this without breaking what I already have?

The project I'm thinking of would be 1) a simple serial interface to Maple that allows me to print from my lovely Maples to the lcd screen. Kinda like a poor mans graphics library,. i.e. print(10,10, "Hello world"). Circle(20,20,20) etc.
The other project is maybe some kind of basic/crappy 'scope, digital only.

Both easy and useful and above all quick projects, the hard part will be persuading the f4discovery to do what I want.

Posted 2 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

hihohoho - ARM maintains a version of gcc and binutils which runs on Windows, Linux, Mac:
https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded

Edit: The gcc and tools you installed when you installed Maple IDE should work, but are older,
(at /Applications/MapleIDE.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/tools/arm/bin)

ST provide a (usually CMSIS compatible) C library:
http://www.st.com/web/en/catalog/tools/PF259429

So, you'll likely need to figure out a few parts, like the linker script, but those two pieces should cover the majority

Posted 2 years ago #

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