8 years, 3 months ago.

New user... Other STM boards?

Hello, I'm normal a user of PIC controllers in Arduino environment. First of all I would like to mention: GREAT job done with this site. First impression is user friendly and will be competition for Arduino.

BUT: am I correct that as user you are limited to the Platforms that are provided by this site, in other words linked to the companies who probably support this site. So this is not a full open-environment for the user?

For example I have an STM32F103VCT6 developmentboard (yes, made in China). As far as I understand, the mbed will not work with this. Probably even downloading wont work since this component still needs J-link.

Or can you create custom boards in mbed? And create files that be used with J-link?

Conclusion: I presume I have to continue for this case with Arduino and STM bootloaders?

2 Answers

8 years, 3 months ago.

Yes, custom boards can be supported and yes it's fully open. Here's the deal. You have to build the project offline. I personally use GCC but others use IAR and Keil. As with any custom board you have to support the custom features you have. With that specific processor mentioned you're looking at pin mapping and function mapping tables that are found within the mbed library.

J-Link, STLINK, others will support any of the cores that are Cortex/ARM7/9 etc. No problem there. Just need to make sure there is a physical connection to the processor SWD or JTAG pins.

I am very dumb with products and stuff. I used mbed and boards. Never came up with any restrictions or problems. There is always some one that helps and I find it a GR8 product and very easy to use.

What I did find is the one supplier UBLOCKS is of no good. The rest very good.

posted by Erastus Coetzee 05 Jan 2016

Hi Bill, can you shortly explain why you need to build the project offline? Don't see the link.... You mention that its fully open, but in the other post, Paul states that you can not even change the memory-restrictions... Or what am I able to change in the mbed library?

posted by Yo Be 06 Jan 2016

To Erastus and Yo if you want to program custom hardware which was the original question then yes you need to build offline. Just download mbed-lib locally and use it to compile with your custom hardware. Your target files need to have the customizations applied to them. You can change *anything* once you're local. A good start for building offline with GCC is here: https://developer.mbed.org/users/AdamGreen/notebook/gcc4mbed/

posted by Bill Bellis 07 Jan 2016
8 years, 3 months ago.

You can use the ST-Link part of any Nucleo board to program almost any STM32 MCU including yours.

This board has much the same MCU as yours but less Flash/RAM.

https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/ST-Nucleo-F103RB/

Using this MBED platform library with the online compiler should work but you will not be able to use more than 128k Flash and 20k RAM, the compiler is set for the smaller memory MCU and you can't change it.

If you see another Chinese option, check if it has the same MCU as what is listed on the platform page, if it has you can use the MBED online compiler to its full potential and 'Drag n Drop' program it via the ST-Link from a Nucleo board.

This one for instance:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/STM32F103RBT6-ARM-STM32-Minimum-System-Development-Board-Cortex-m3-M76-Top-/331684083940?hash=item4d39e978e4:g:b3kAAOSwI-BWIhec

Thx for the input. As I'm new in this area, I have a J-link now. Difference with ST-link is the debugging element? Or is there a major difference between the 2 devices. As far as I understood its a tool to go to serial mode that allows you to download the software. If I connect the J-link to mbed with ST-Nucleo platform selected, would it work? Or I need to buy the Nucleo board? Thanks in advance

posted by Yo Be 06 Jan 2016