Michael Bawden

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9 years, 3 months ago.

Nucleo boards for commercial products

So according to http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/active/en/resource/legal/legal_agreement/license_agreement/EvaluationProductLicenseAgreement.pdf, up near the top it states you cannot use the nuclei boards in a commercial product. This has thrown a spanner in my latest project and I'm wondering what alternative boards are available that have enough pins to drive a 40 pin QVGA board plus some spares for other things and I can sell commercially? Cheers Mike

5 Answers

Paul Staron
9 years, 3 months ago.

If you have hardware building facilities (namely a good soldering iron & fine PTFE wire), you can make your own CPU board and use the Nucleo board to program it.

I have been using these boards for some time with good success and saves the cost and time of a custom built PCB.

http://www.schmartboard.com/index.asp?page=products_clearance&id=274

Here is one I baked earlier:

/media/uploads/star297/20141208_132707.jpg /media/uploads/star297/20141230_222601.jpg

Hi Paul, I used the nuclei because it had the Arduino form factor for the pins which made it easy to source shields for it. To customise the MPU board means I need to make custom shields as well which is a cost and manual step I didn't want to have to do.

posted by Michael Bawden 28 Dec 2014

Hello again Paul, so how do you go about programming the chip and is it as easy as "drag and drop" like on a full size board through the USB? Cheers Mike

posted by Michael Bawden 04 Jan 2015

Basically yes, isolate the on-board MCU (disconnect the SWD-CLK for the Freescale boards), connect the SWD-I/O, SWD-CLK, RESET, +3.3v and GND to your project target MCU. Then drag and drop your code as normal. The smaller 5 pin header in the picture is the connection. Effectively the Mbed board becomes a J-Link programmer, but only for the exact target that is on the Mbed board.

posted by Paul Staron 04 Jan 2015
andy sellers
9 years, 3 months ago.

Check with olimex. i think they have boards running stm32 with arduino shield headers.

Also check leaflabs for something similar .

And i wouldn't be suprised if seed studios have something relevant.

BTW , the bootloader might be a bit different.

Hi andy, I already have a few Leaflabs boards but there aren't enough pins for the LCD, RTC, analog multiplexer, SD card and a keypad on it so that's why I moved up to the Nucleo. Also I'm still in the process of converting my Arduino code to mbed's version and would like to preserve that effort. But I'll look at the olimex and see how they compare. Cheers Mike

posted by Michael Bawden 03 Jan 2015
David Fletcher
9 years, 3 months ago.

Micheal,

I think the artwork is available for the Nucleo boards. If you talk to ST to see if you can use it for a commercial purpose, this could be a way forward.

Dave.

David Lowe
9 years, 3 months ago.

On eBay I've noticed Chinese-made dev boards which are compatible with the Nucleo 401, retaining the Arduino & Morpho connectors. Search for "XNUCLEO".

Hi David, they look really nice I think I'll have to see what their licensing policy is. Cheers Mike

posted by Michael Bawden 05 Jan 2015
Greg Steiert
9 years, 3 months ago.

If you really need the STM32 with arduino headers, you could consider the Seeed Arch Max: http://developer.mbed.org/platforms/Seeed-Arch-Max/

I would suggest considering the NXP LPC parts that have the drag and drop boot loader in ROM. That will make it easier to include drag and drop firmware updates without adding another device if you do design your own board.

But again, does NPX allow you to use their boards in a commercial product that's the real nub of my problem. Cheers Mike

posted by Michael Bawden 05 Jan 2015