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johnsotack9
johnsotack9
Associate III
July 18, 2012
Question

Evaluation Board Suggestions.

  • July 18, 2012
  • 2 replies
  • 529 views
Posted on July 18, 2012 at 16:55

I like the STM32F4 Discovery  for deveopment before hardware arrives.  It brings out many of the processor pins, and most of those pins are not ''hard wired'' to a function on the board.  This accomadates developing firmware modules on the Discovery board that use the same peripherals / pins as the custom hardware design does.

The discovery board comes close to being ideal but falls a bit short.  A small number of the pins are hardwired to on board chips.  For example, I believe USART1 is hard wired to the USB OTG function.  For UASART debug I removed a couple components from the board.  Additinally, some of the many pins are not brought out.  More specifically ports beyond E are not available at the edge headers.

For the prehardware firmware development I just completed, the ideal board:
  1. Would leave as many pins free as possible using only pins needed to support debug.  Alternatively, jumpers could allow disconnection of pings connected to functions such as USB.
  2. Bring all pins out to the edge headers.

I really like the STM32F4 Discovery.  I am only identifying how a board might better satisfy the specific customer need of firmware development before prototype boards are available.

John
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    2 replies

    Tesla DeLorean
    Tesla DeLorean
    Guru
    July 18, 2012
    Posted on July 18, 2012 at 17:42

    I wired up USART2 for debug.

    Different boards tickle different needs, here are a couple I've run across in my searches.

    http://www.wvshare.com/product/Open407Z-Package-B.htm

    https://www.olimex.com/dev/stm32-h407.html

    http://www.hotmcu.com/hystm32f4xxcore144-coredev-board-p-10.html?cPath=1_20

    http://www.waveshare.net/shop/Core407V.htm

    http://www.wayengineer.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=50_66&products_id=569

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    Andrew Neil
    Andrew Neil
    Super User
    July 19, 2012
    Posted on July 19, 2012 at 22:45

    Although the Discovery boards don't have ''jumpers'' in the traditional sense of 0.1''-pitch pins with removable links, they do have little ''solder-bridge'' links which can be used to disconnect unwanted circuitry - see the User Manual (which includes schematics) for details...

    (I don't find this a very user-friendly approach, but it is the way that things are going these days - ST are by no means alone in adopting it...)

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