cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Checking whether my Bluepill is real or fake?

SSmit.5
Associate

I bought Bluepill devboards from two different sellers, paying extra to hopefully receive genuine STM chips. When I use the Bluepill Diagnostics Tool written by Terry Porter, the tool reports passing on all counts except for one:

Declared flash not 65536

Does that definitely mean it isn't genuine? Thinking I could get a second opinion, I launched STM32 CubeIDE. I've barely ventured outside the world of Arduino so I have no idea what I am doing. I tried to follow instructions I got off Bing LLM AI which advised me to try to start debugging in the CubeIDE. Can anyone tell me whether the following can be used to infer whether the chip is genuine or not? Sorry if that's a stupid question. I heard that the Cube softwares don't work with fake chips so I was thinking this would be a way to get a second opinion on the providence of the chips.

 

ST-LINK SN : 16004A002933353739303541 ST-LINK FW : V2J41S7 Board : -- Voltage : 3.17V SWD freq : 4000 KHz Connect mode: Under Reset Reset mode : Hardware reset Device ID : 0x410 Revision ID : Rev X Device name : STM32F101/F102/F103 Medium-density Flash size : 128 KBytes Device type : MCU Device CPU : Cortex-M3 BL Version : -- Memory Programming ... Opening and parsing file: ST-LINK_GDB_server_a27496.srec File : ST-LINK_GDB_server_a27496.srec Size : 3.43 KB Address : 0x08000000 Erasing memory corresponding to segment 0: Erasing internal memory sectors [0 3] Download in Progress: File download complete Time elapsed during download operation: 00:00:00.344 Verifying ... Download verified successfully Shutting down... Exit.
View more

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 REPLIES 3
TDK
Guru

> When I use the Bluepill Diagnostics Tool written by Terry Porter, the tool reports passing on all counts except for one

Failing this test (or any of the others) would suggest it's not a genuine chip.

If you feel a post has answered your question, please click "Accept as Solution".

Isn't that a city in Rhode Island? Provenance perhaps?

Looks like it's reporting the Flash Size in STM32 Cube Programmer, it's in a word in OTP you could double check it vs RM0008. As I recall several of the fakes report the wrong JTAG ID's. I would suppose if it programs and debugs in the STM32 tools, that should be sufficient to use it.

Questions better directed too Terry Porter...

Tips, Buy me a coffee, or three.. PayPal Venmo
Up vote any posts that you find helpful, it shows what's working..

the jtag ID just has 1 bit different, "version number" , so its not a fake, just another version of similar chip, from GD .

"fake" is in my opinion , when "STMxx" is written on it, but a GD chip is inside.

see:

https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

 

i have 2 blue pill boards , at first i was thinking i got a fake, but is GD32F103 written on it, and even seller from ali has written: a new F103 from China...so i could not open a case. was my fault, not to read in detail all there.

and btw the GD chip is in some way even better than STM : core can run 108MHz, flash is faster (zero wait states!) and ADC has better precision - just cannot debug in CubeIDE, because other chip ID.

and its cheap, GD32F103CBT6 i payed 1.37 € . (inc. VAT and postage)

to check: connect to stm32CubeIDE and debug...if working, its STM chip. otherwise...probably GD or CKS chip.

If you feel a post has answered your question, please click "Accept as Solution".