STM32F429I-DISCO

[turboscrew]

Posted on January 17, 2014 at 15:39

What kind of board is this?

What's the catch? It looks like almost free compared to other STM32-boards with any kind of display.

I've been thinking of buying myself a toy-board to play with, and this looked like capable yet cheap alternative - even suspiciously so: 29.11 eur. Or is there a decimal point mistake in the price?

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on January 17, 2014 at 16:13

The first batch I bought were $42 (USD) Mouser, the set I have on order are now $24. This is more in line with the pricing offered by Farnell in the UK which had been cheaper since the beginning.

They are nice enough boards, although the ones I've seen don't ship well, at least via USPS, and the screen frames detach easily. A couple at the seminar had problems with the touch screen function.

Technically I have a bigger gripe with the design in that it's not very expandable. The design focuses on the LCD+SDRAM, and the pin utilization forecloses on the use of ETHERNET, DCMI and SDIO. You can do 1-bit SDIO if that appeals, there are only two or so ADC pins available. I posted the Micro Xplorer files to another thread if those are of interest.

[turboscrew]

Posted on January 17, 2014 at 16:36

THANKS!

Now that you mentioned, I understood to look: there are not too many connectors!

That's why... It doesn't help if you have CAN controllers USB controllers and whatever, if there are no connectors. I have no urge to solder anything with pads less than 1 mm apart - presuming there are any pads drawn from the chip for the interfaces.

I wondered about the price since most other STM32-boards are priced around 300 eur.

My appetite woke up now that I worked a bit with STM3240G-EVAL. (Drooling...)

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on January 17, 2014 at 21:33

I recently added a STM3240G-EVAL to my collection, the EVAL series are in a whole different class of boards to the DISCOVERY series.

eBay does have a number of alternatives, at much more competitive prices. The

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RedDragon407-STM32F4-Cortex-M4-Ethernet-wireless-2-4G-SDIO-Serial-camera-/121087293812?pt=Art_Prints&hash=item1c315d7974

being quite competitive. The function is ultimately limited by the part choice of the 144-pin device rather than the 176-pin. WaveShare has some nice boards, and break-out options.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32-Development-Board-STM32F407IGT6-STM32F407-ARM-Cortex-M4-ST-Kit-XCore407I-/261288708762?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cd6054a9a

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Core407I-STM32F407IGT6-STM32F407-STM32-ARM-Development-Board-Full-I-O-expander-/251145395966?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a796e9efe

and

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F407IGT6-STM32F407-ARM-Cortex-M4-Evaluation-STM32-Development-Board-EVK407I-/261288709201?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cd6054c51

The

http://uk.farnell.com/stmicroelectronics/stm32f4dis-bb/expansion-stm32f4-cortex-m4-discovery/dp/2250205

break-out board for the STM32F4-DISCO is recommended, quickly adds SDIO and ETHERNET, with options for LCD and DCMI/CAMERA. Or something similar from

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F407-Discovery-ExtBoard-Use-STM32F407-Discovery-Core-Board-ge-/251271613585?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a80f48c91

[turboscrew]

Posted on January 18, 2014 at 00:07

Thanks. The suggestions were a nice surprise.

GB-STM32F107 from Waveshare or that RedDragon you mentioned are pretty much

optimal in features/price for me (features = memory + interfaces). I'm actually more into bare iron programming than using OSes, so the memory doesn't need to be very large, but I admit that Atmel Butterfly is a bit small in memory - 1kB RAM.

[kenkyee]

Posted on February 23, 2014 at 15:19

> Technically I have a bigger gripe with the design in that it's not very expandable. The design

> focuses on the LCD+SDRAM, and the pin utilization forecloses on the use of ETHERNET, DCMI and SDIO.

> You can do 1-bit SDIO if that appeals, there are only two or so ADC pins available.

> I posted the Micro Xplorer files to another thread if those are of interest.

If you're using uclinux w/ decent drivers, can't you use a USB->ethernet adapter?

I didn''t adding ethernet to it was this painful until I dug this up...wow :o

http://www.emcraft.com/stm32f429discovery/connecting-to-ethernet-on-stm32f429

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on February 23, 2014 at 17:22

If you're using uclinux w/ decent drivers, can't you use a USB->ethernet adapter?

Sure, but why would I want to run Linux on such an underpowered system? I've got boards running 400-500 MHz, proper MMU, proper caching, 256-512 MB SDRAM, full USB hosting, Ethernet, SD Card, that can do a far better job, and I won't be constantly banging my head on low hanging beams?