Project Migration to STM

[lufa]

Dear Team,

Currently, we have developed a prototype with an ESP32 and the prototype meets all the functionalities. However, we are now having some troubles scaling it to production. So now we are looking to migrate our product to using STM MCU. We have found STM32H573I-DK closely matching to all the peripherals we require for our product.

Basically, we need WiFi, 1x Ethernet, 1x SPI, 1x I2S (for Microphone input, can be analog too with external codec), 1x I2C and a handful of GPIOs. We would also like to have 16MB flash memory and 2MB of RAM for backward compatibility with the ESP32, but STM Discovery Kits dont seem to support such high flash & RAMs. An FPU would be also nice to have feature.

Looking forward to your suggestions.

[Andrew Neil]

Not sure what the question is here: are you asking for a chip recommendation, or a development board recommendation?

Clearly, there can't be a development board for every single possible application - at some point, you're going to have to make custom hardware with your specific requirements...

The STM32H573II chip does have an FPU:

https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32h573ii.html#:~:text=The%20Cortex%C2%AE%2DM33%20core%20features%20a%20single%2Dprecision%20floating%2Dpoint%20unit%20(FPU)

[lufa]

Apologies for the confusion. At this time, we are looking closely at a development board to see if our software can be ported properly and meet all the requirements we had with our pilot prototype. If its successful, we do not mind using a different MCU more/less powerful than the one on STM32H573I-DK and move to the next iteration of the prototype.

Our idea is to first be confident on the software aspects and then work on a custom design. The other way around would consume a lot of time.

Hence, find a development board which closely meets our requirements, perform software evaluation and then work on the custom design.

[Andrew Neil]

In general, dev boards tend to feature the higher/highest members of a family - so you get to see & try all the options.

You can then scale back to a lower member of the family if appropriate ...

[SofLit]

Hello,

---

but STM Discovery Kits dont seem to support such high flash & RAMs. An FPU would be also nice to have feature.

Just to mention that There is an 512-Mbit Octo-SPI flash memory on the board:

But unfortunately no high SRAM size on the board.

[Guillaume K]

Hello

If I remember well, the STM32H573I-DK is delivered with an MB1400 WiFi daughter board that connects to the DK board STMOD+ connector.

There is example of WiFi software with Azure RTOS + NetXDuo in STM32 H5 Cube software in STM32CubeH5/Projects/STM32H573I-DK/Applications/NetXDuo/Nx_Network_Basics_wifi at main · STMicroelectronics/STM32CubeH5 (github.com) . There is also an IPerf project at same level.

If you want FreeRTOS + LwIP it should not be too difficult to port it.

The communication with the MB1400 EMW3080 MXCHIP WiFi module is done with SPI and a few GPIOs for coordination. The TCP-IP stack is handled by Azure RTOS's Netxduo stack on the STM32H5 (the stack is not on the wifi chip).

BR

Guillaume

[lufa · Accepted solution]

Thank You for all the insights, they have been very useful. We also stumbled upon STM32MP135F-DK which has all the peripherals we needed except for the Audio interface. The controller/processor used on the boards are ridiculously close to one another in terms of costs (~€11/-). At this point, it would now be question of whether or not we would like undertake the effort to develop an IOT node with an MPU or something relatively easier to handle in terms of development with an MCU.

(since all replies were helpful, selecting the most recent reply as Solution)