STMicro already announced a $24 NFC development kit a few days ago, and they’ve now announced new ultra low cost STM32 development boards. STMicro Nucleo development boards are based on different STM32 MCU based on ARM Cortex M0, M3 and M4, feature Arduino headers, and are supported by mbed platform.
There are currently four boards available:
- NUCLEO-F401RE – Based on STM32F401RET6 ARM Cortex M4 MCU @ 84 MHz with 512KB flash memory, 96 KB SRAM
- NUCLEO-F030R8 – Based on STM32F030R8T6 ARM Cortex M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 64KB flash memory, 8KB SRAM
- NUCLEO-F103RB – Based on STM32F103RBT6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ with 128KB flash memory, 20 KB SRAM
- NUCLEO-L152RE – Based on STM32L152RET6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ 32MHz with 512KB flash memory, 32KB SRAM
All four boards share the following specifications:
- STM32 microcontroller with LQFP64 package
- Two types of extension resources
- Arduino Uno Revision 3 connectivity
- STMicroelectronics Morpho extension pin headers for full access to all STM32 I/Os
- mbed-enabled (mbed.org)
- On-board ST-LINK/V2-1 debugger/programmer with SWD connector – selection-mode switch to use the kit as a standalone ST-LINK/V2-1
- Flexible board power supply
- USB VBUS or external source(3.3 V, 5 V, 7 – 12 V)
- Power management access point
- Three LEDs – USB communication (LD1), user LED (LD2), power LED (LD3)
- Two push buttons – USER and RESET
- USB re-enumeration capability: three different interfaces supported on USB: Virtual COM port, mass storage, and debug port
As you can see from the diagram below, they should eventually be at least 8 Nucleo boards to choose from, based on STM32L0, STM32F0 and STM32F3 MCUs. The company will provide a software HAL library including a variety of software examples, and beside the mbed platform, the boards will be supported by other Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as IAR, Keil, GCC-based IDEs.
All for boards are currently available for $10.32 via STMicro Nucleo page, where you’ll also find user’s manuals, schematics, gerber files, and links to development tools, firmware and drivers. Four more boards, namely Nucleo-F072RB, Nucleo-F302R8, Nucleo-F334R8, and Nucleo-L053R8 boards will be introduced in Q2 2014. The company will showcase the boards are Embedded World 2014 in Germany on February 25-27, and if you happen to get there you may get a free sample. All you need to do is to register here. You can also find more information on mbed Nucleo page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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All we need now is to get Energia to support this.
Shipping charges to Thailand: USPS Global Priority Mail ($30.00) OR FedEx International Priority ($61.00)
I’ll give it a pass.
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)
I’m in France, if you really want one I can try to get some of these and send one to you, if the shipping charges are lower.
I’m interested in having one of these anyway ! Kind of similar to Teensy 3 for half the price.
What’s the difference in processor between the 2 discovery boards (STM32F429 vs STM32F401RET6)?
@FergusL
Thanks for the offer, somehow I missed your comment. I don’t really need it, I’ll just play with something else. 🙂
@ben
I think you mean STM32F429 Discovery board and NUCLEO-F401RE board. I don’t know the full details, but the first one has a display and 64Mbit external SDRAM.
I’ve never used mbed, but isn’t it like arm’s cloud based compiler? Perhaps mbed could make on the STM32F429 Discovery board and utilize that extra ram?
@ben
I haven’t used it, but mbed is a popular framework for ARM MCUs. Your board is not currently supported: https://mbed.org/platforms/. It might be difficult to make it work on STM32F429 by yourself, even though it’s open source.
I have a NUCLEO-F401RE and it’s a world of hurt getting it to work with mbed offline and Eclipse… I have succeeded in getting a build environment working with Eclipse and stlink, but cannot get mbed to work. ST’s website is also a mess and there’s heavy focus on Windows tools, not enough on Linux and Mac OS X.
Be aware – the USB interface’s debug channel and virtual COM port channel on these boards are intermittent in operation. The debug channel periodically loses communications with the host PC with a USB communications error and the virtual COM port does not always deliver all of its data to the PC host. The missing data is not lost, just delayed until the next data is sent from the board to the PC host. I’ve never had any problems like this on the various T.I. LaunchPad or Arduino boards I’ve used! Also, the “STM32CubeF4” is very immature. I’ve found many various… Read more »
@Josh
How many users is developing embedded using Mac OS X ?
NUCLEO-F401RE can now be purchased on DealExtreme for $24.42 – http://www.dx.com/p/st-nucleo-f401re-stm32f401re-development-board-for-arduino-white-multicolored-326903?Utm_rid=93072394&Utm_source=affiliate