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warcatz
Associate III
December 20, 2013
Question

st429 Disco Expansion Board

  • December 20, 2013
  • 7 replies
  • 1660 views
Posted on December 20, 2013 at 23:08

Hi ;)

I finally get all the material for build my little expansion board.

I have now 16Mb External SDRAM and a Direct VGA output.

We can use a 512k x 16Bits SRAM too but is not necessary , i think with a total of 24Mb SDRAM we can do allot ;)

Actually i am cleaning my code and i will post it when finished.

Everything is working very well , i use a Wii Classic controller with I2C and 2 x TM1638 with 48 Buttons in SPI :)

It's just bad that the SDIO port just have the D0 pin free, i use then my SD Card in 1 bit mode.

The most difficult was to remade a graphics library , the ST example is so buggy that it was unusable :(

So , for more info you can take a look here :

https://sites.google.com/site/suprabotics/stm429-discovery-expansion-board-v2-0

Cheers.

PS : i have see a Linux port for the st429 Disco board around , i think this expansion can help with the more memory ;)

#gerber-file
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    7 replies

    warcatz
    warcatzAuthor
    Associate III
    January 6, 2014
    Posted on January 06, 2014 at 09:25

    Hi , and , Happy new year ;)

    I just have finish a workable version from my library for :

    VGA,

    SDRAM Expansion ,

    SD Card,

    Wii classic controller,

    TM1638 7segment control with buttons (alloooot of button ! )

    The source code will be posted here when i finish to clean it ...

    You can watch a little video here :

    http://youtu.be/gQznHo5hwaQ

    Bye.

    warcatz
    warcatzAuthor
    Associate III
    January 8, 2014
    Posted on January 08, 2014 at 17:18

    I cleaned my code and sources + infos from the library are at :

    https://sites.google.com/site/suprabotics/source-code

    Enjoy.

    Mark Edwards
    Associate III
    January 11, 2014
    Posted on January 11, 2014 at 03:30

    Good work.

    I am interested in the Direct VGA output for my own project. I have looked at the links but can’t see how to buy the board or order the PCB.

    warcatz
    warcatzAuthor
    Associate III
    January 11, 2014
    Posted on January 11, 2014 at 09:54

    It's the most asked question ;)

    So , i have contact SeedStudio for know how you can get my board , i get this answer.

    //*********************************************************************

    Thank you for your support! We are glad your friends are also interested in Seeed PCB service. Everyone could have the board they want from Seeedstudio!:)

    If your friend want your board, is it possible for you to send them your Gerber file. They could use it to place order here:

    http://www.seeedstudio.com/service/index.php?r=site/pcbService

    Consider to protect customer's privacy, we cannot sold your board directly, hope you understand. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks again for your support! That really means a lot to us.

    //*********************************************************************

    So , i attach the file to the post , so you can made it from SeedStudio or OpenPCB(they are slow) ... your choice.

    Cheers.

    PS : That is the PCB , you have to solder the components by yourself , some smd soldering skill will be good to have ;)

    ________________

    Attachments :

    st429_top_exp_v2_5pcs_10by10.zip : https://st--c.eu10.content.force.com/sfc/dist/version/download/?oid=00Db0000000YtG6&ids=0680X000006Hzsd&d=%2Fa%2F0X0000000bQb%2F_RUf4vVpAYqi7x2P9QiehyhjsKS00XHRnNO_co3b1go&asPdf=false
    warcatz
    warcatzAuthor
    Associate III
    January 11, 2014
    Posted on January 11, 2014 at 23:14

    Hi ,

    I just finish to adapt the Sega Master System Emulator from Alessandro Rocchegiani.

    It work in VGA at 640 x 480.

    All info here :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz4leSl8n-U&feature=youtu.be

    And as usual the source will be found here :

    https://sites.google.com/site/suprabotics/

    Cheers.

    kenkyee
    Visitor II
    December 31, 2014
    Posted on December 31, 2013 at 03:46

    Should be interesting to see if you can execute code out of it :)

    warcatz
    warcatzAuthor
    Associate III
    December 31, 2014
    Posted on December 31, 2013 at 10:18

    I think if you can do it with the st429 dev board you can do it with this one too.

    The SDRAM Addr are :

    // FMC SDRAM Bank address
    #define SDRAM_BANK1_ADDR ((uint32_t)0xC0000000)
    #define SDRAM_BANK2_ADDR ((uint32_t)0xD0000000)

    The Bank2 is the original st429 disco SDRAM At Bank1 is the one i put on the expansion board. I see somewhere on this forum that the SDRAM access is 6x slower than the internal st429 memory , probably due to external access. I use it for put picture , sprites ,array of data that are used for the VGA screen. But for now i never have try to use external ram for execute code (i don't know how to do it ;) ) And if it's 6x slower i will then prefer keep my program in internal RAM and use the external SDRAM for video and data that don't require high speed. The code cleaning is actually not finished , when I'm finish with this i will post it here. Cheers.