Upgrading the Discovery with STM32F103

[kuchura]

Posted on March 14, 2011 at 16:20

I've got STM32F103RET6 chip, 72 MHz, 512K flash and 64K RAM. The chip seems to be pin-to-pin compatible with the STM32F100RBT6.

What if I replace the original chip with this more powerful one? Has anyone ever tried to upgrade the board this way?

[james239955_stm1_stmicro_com]

Posted on March 14, 2011 at 17:35

I recently saw the the following on a web site:

''If that isn't enough, just for signing up for the new STM32 design contest, I received a new Discovery module with the STM32F103 chip for free. Same board, but the processor has 1MB of flash, 96K RAM, 72MHz and even more I/O. Yikes! The module isn't for sale yet, nor is the chip, so I don't know the chip or module price. (1/'11)''

This was on the following site:

http://www.djerickson.com/stm32/index.html

The would be awesome!  I love

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore

.

[STM32 hobbyist]

Posted on March 17, 2011 at 16:50

Hi kuchura.yury;

STM32F103RET6 is pin to pin compatible with STM32F100RBT6. You can replace the latter by any STM32 64 pin package.

[donald2]

Posted on March 24, 2011 at 23:45

Doh!  Now I really wish I had signed up for the design contest.

The project I would have used was converting my EV motor controller code.  The AVR processor we started with has a slow A/D converter.  We do over-current protection in software, and the sample rate isn't high enough to do a good job.  There definitely isn't the chance to do waveform reporting, and no compute power left to implement some of the other cool features I wanted to add.

One of the interesting features of the controller software is that it does implements automotive OBD-II reporting over CAN, including reporting trouble codes. With the AVR I use a MCP2515 CAN controller over SPI.  I was hoping to use the integrated CAN controller on the STLink part of Discovery board, but found that STLink section wasn't really programmable.  So instead we continue to use a MCP2515 with the Discovery board.

With a little bit of studying i concluded that there were no pin conflicts that would preclude upgrading the main 32f100 to a part with CAN.  So I bought a 32f105rct6, planning to solder it in the place of the '100.  But I haven't yet been willing to risk breaking a still-working board to do the upgrade.