We've been using a NUCLEO-L433RC-P to prototype a low -power PCB and it has served us very well.
We're now embarking on a new project where we're actually going to use the NUCLEO and create a PCB with a header to plug the NUCLEO into. I thought this would be a flexible approach because if we decided we wanted something more powerful than the STM32L433 we could just get a different NUCLEO.
Unfortunately I've just realised that despite their similar physical appearances not all NUCLEOs are compatible/interchangeable. It appears that the PCB we've just drawn to carry the NUCLEO-L433RC-P cannot be used for the NUCLEO-F446RE, for example, because the ST Morpho pin mapping is slightly different. I now think we should redraw the PCB to carry a different NUCLEO but I'm not sure what would give us the most flexibility.
As far as I can tell, I have the choice between 3 ranges:
- NUCLEO-L443RC-P and it's ST Morpho header. There are only 2 '-P' boards and I've pretty much discounted this.
- NUCLEO-F446 and it's ST Morpho header. There are 19 boards described in the same UM but no F7s or H7s.
- NUCLEO-F446ZE and it's ST Zio header. There are 12 boards described in the same UM including F7s and H7s. No L4s but this isn't a low-power application.
I don't know that I need the performance of an F7/H7 but it would be nice to have too much performance rather than too little. I also think the 144-pin package provides more IO than we need but if we have some spare it doesn't matter.
Initially we just need SPI, I2C, SWD (via ST-Link/V2), UART and some GPIOs.
Is there any reason why we shouldn't change to the NUCLEO-F446ZE and it's ST Zio header?
The ST Zio appears to have 100 pins so surely it's going to cover most of the peripherals in a flexible way!
We don't want to fit the ST Morpho headers to the NUCLEO-F446ZE because we might be buying 10s of these.
Thanks,
Matt
