$3 STM32 “Black Pill” Board Features STM32F4 Cortex-M4 MCU, Optional SPI Flash

Blue Pill 2 Cortex-M4 MCU

STM32 “Blue Pill” is a popular, and cheap (>$2) development board based on STMicro STM32F103C8T6 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller and programmable with the Arduino IDE. I’ve just been informed the board got an upgrade of sorts with a “Blue Pill 2” board featuring either STM32F401CCU6 or STM32F411CEU6 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller, and a USB Type-C port for power and programming. It’s black, so instead, I’ll call Black Bill as some others appear to do. Specifications for the Blue Pill & Black Pill boards (new features in bold): MCU (one of the other) STMicro STM32F103C8T6 ARM Cortex-M3 MCU @ 72 MHz with 64KB flash memory, 20KB SRAM. STMicro STM32F401CCU6 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ 84 MHz with 256 KB flash, 64KB SRAM STMicro STM32F411CEU6 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ 100 MHz with 512KB flash, 128KB SRAM Storage – Footprint for SPI flash USB Blue Pill – 1x micro USB port for power and programming Black […]

Marlin 2.0 Open Source 3D Printer Firmware Finally Released

Marlin 2.0 Firmware Release

Back in June, we wrote about Marlin 2.0 firmware supporting ESP32 3D printer board, but at the time the firmware was still in RC1 (Release Candidate) phase. I was informed Marlin 2.0 firmware had been in beta for several years now, but the good news is that Marlin 2.0.0 open-source 3D printer firmware has now been officially released. Some of Marlin 2.0.0 new features include: 32-bit support with several boards including Arduino DUE (SAM3X8E), Adafruit Grand Central (SAM5D), Smoothie / SBASE / EZBoard based on NXP LPC176x, SKR Mini powered by STM32, as well as ESP32 boards Some improvements were made to some AVR boards including Melzi (ATmega 1280), RAMPS (ATmega 2560), and RAMBo / miniRAMBo / Einsy RAMBo boards PlatformIO build environments for supported boards VSCode “Auto Build Marlin” extension for one-click build Power-Loss Recovery for SD print jobs Magnetic Parking Extruder support Magnetic Switching Toolhead and Toolchanger support […]

esp32MX-E ESP32 Board Comes with Ethernet and USB-C Ports (Crowdfunding)

ESP32 Ethernet & USB-C Board

We’ve already covered several ESP32 boards with Ethernet including Olimex ESP32-GATEWAY and Silicognition wESP32, and I’ve just noticed Espressif also made its own with ESP32-Ethernet-Kit. Modtronix Engineering has another take with esp32MX-E board that beside Ethernet also exposes a USB-C port, a MicroSD card slot, and also adds an STM32F0 microcontroller acting as an I2C I/O expander. esp32MX-E specifications: Wireless Module ESP32 dual-core LX6 microprocessor at 160 or 240 MHz, 4 MB Flash, 520 KB SRAM Wi-Fi 4 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth 4.2 BR/EDR & BLE Storage – MicroSD card slot USB – USB Type-C connector for programming, power, and Virtual COM port Expansion via 14-pin and 20-pin female headers 22x I/O pins of which 4 are inputs only. 4x 5 V tolerant I/O pins Not all I/Os are available when the SD Card is used Programmable pull-up and pull-down resistors on most inputs Secondary MCU – I²C I/O expander implemented […]

Pocket Popcorn Computer Handheld Linux Computer Looks Like an Improved, Faster PocketCHIP (Crowdfunding)

Pocket Popcorn Computer

PocketCHIP was a Linux handheld computer powered by Allwinner R8/GR8 Cortex-A8 based CHIP board. The battery-powered device came with a small resistive display, 512 MB RAM, 4GB NAND flash, and a keyboard allowing to run Debian with PICO8 GUI so you could play retro games, access the terminal and so on. But since Next Thing Co folded last year the products are not available anymore. Since the designs were open source, Source Parts first tried to resurrect the board via their slightly modified Popcorn Computer but the Kickstarter campaign was unsuccessful. The company is now attempting to bring back PocketCHIP (sort of) with Pocket Popcorn Computer (abbreviated as Pocket P.C.) with a new design, and a much more powerful quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and overall better specs. Pocket Popcorn Computer specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU with Arm Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 RAM Storage – […]

Fingerprint Identification with STM32 MCU and Serial TFT LCD Module

STM32 Fingerprint TFT LCD

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Amy working for STONE Technology, a company specializing in industrial liquid crystal display modules This month, I planned to develop a fingerprint door lock project. When I selected the fingerprint identification module, the project was suspended. However, I thought that since the fingerprint identification module had been purchased, I would simply test it. This fingerprint module can be easily purchased online, connected over UART to an MCU  board. It supports fingerprint scanning, fingerprint entry, fingerprint comparison, and fingerprint deletion. Since the fingerprint module manufacturer provides a demo program for STM32F103 series microcontrollers, I bought a small development board based on STM32F103C8T6. The demo program of the fingerprint module uses LED lights to prompt the user to enter the fingerprint and compare the status (success or failure). But I want to use an LCD display, so I chose a 480×272 resolution serial LCD display. […]

STMicroelectronics Introduces Affordable LoRa Development Packs For All User Types

STMicroelectronics has recently announced the launch of a new set of LoRa Development packs, which are not only affordable, but they are aiming to a large pool of users from big organizations, small companies, hackers, engineers, students, and hobbyists. The ready-to-use development packs are aimed for applications bent on leveraging LoRa ’s long-range, low-power wireless IoT connectivity for tracking, positioning, metering, and many related applications. STMicroelectronics is releasing the P-NUCLEO-LRWAN2 pack and P-NUCLEO-LRWAN3 pack. Both packs provide a complete LoRaWAN development kit, and they include gateways, end-nodes, and ST tools, which are all based on the STM32 Nucleo evaluation boards. The LoRa gateway on both packs is based on the STM32 Nucleo-144 development board, NUCLEO-F746ZG. The STM32 Nucleo-144 development board with STM32F746ZG MCU supports Arduino, ST Zio, and Morpho connectivity. The Gateway header pins are exposed out to facilitate more development, and they support interfacing with LoRaWAN network-server providers LORIOT, Actility, myDevices Cayenne for LoRa […]

Arduino MKR WAN 1310 LoRa Board Gets HW Security, Longer Battery Life and a 2MB SPI flash

MRK WAN 1310

Two year ago Arduino launched MKR WAN 1300 board powered by Arduino Zero compatible Microchip Atmel SAMD21 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU and a Murata CMWZ1ZZABZ LoRa module based on Semtech SX1276 and STMicro STM32L microcontroller. The company has now announced a new improved LoRa board – MKR WAN 1310 – with lower power consumption thanks to a new battery charger , a 2MB SPI flash  which enables data logging and other OTA (Over-the-Air) functions, and a crypto chip that can securely store credentials and certificates. Specifications: MCU – Microchip Atmel SAMD21 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32 KB SRAM, 256 KB flash (8KB for bootloader) External Storage – 2MB SPI flash Digital I/O Pins – 8x digital I/Os, 12x PWM, UART, SPI, and I2C, 8x external interrupts Analog Pins – 7x analog inputs (8/10/12-bit ADC), and 1x analog output (10-bit DAC) DC Current per I/O […]

ctxLink Open Hardware WiFi Debug Probe is based Black Magic Probe (Crowdfunding)

ctxlink

Last month, we wrote about Blip nRF52840 dev board that also included an STM32F103 MCU running the open source Black Magic Probe (BMP) firmware for debugging and programming. Based on the original Black Magic Probe hardware product page, BMP is a JTAG and SWD adapter used for programming and debugging ARM Cortex MCUs, and does not require intermediate programs such as OpenOCD or STLink server. Instead, you can run GNU Debugger (GDB) and select the virtual COM port offered by the debug board. The reason I’m bringing BMP again today, is because a new open source hardware wireless debugging probe for Cortex-M based on Black Magic Probe has been launched in the last few days. ctxLink key features and specifications: Microcontroller – STMicro STM32F401RE Arm Cortex -M4F MCU at up to 84 MHz Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n WiFi via Microchip WINC1500 module USB – 1x micro USB port for connection to […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC