How to Program STMicro STM8S $1 Board in Linux

In January, I discovered there was such thing as a one dollar development board based on STMicro STM8S103F3P6 8-bit MCU with 1KB SRAM, 8KB flash, and 640 bytes EEPROM, some GPIOs as well as I2C, UART, SPI, ADC, and PWM signals. Links to documentation and source code were provided, but development tools were only Windows based. However, one of my reader informed me SDCC (Small Devices C Compiler) supported STM8, and development in Linux should be feasible. So I decided to buy the board on eBay for $1.62, as well as an ST_link V2 programmer for STM8 / STM32 for $4.52 in order to flash the firmware. The board came pretty quickly, i.e. within 2 to 3 weeks. But due to a lost package, the programmer took nearly 3 months to reach me, as the seller had to re-send after I failed to receive it within 2 months. It comes […]

Meet STMicro STM8S Based One Dollar Development Board

ESP8266 modules are $3 Wi-Fi boards targeting IoT applications that can be used in standalone mode, or connected to another MCU based board. But what if you don’t actually need Wi-Fi, but instead require a tiny board to control a few GPIOs? Arduino Pro mini can be used for this, but it costs about $10 on Sparkfun, and it’s certainly cheap enough for most projects. Switching to Aliexpress, you can get Arduino Pro mini clones for about $2, and a bit less in 10 pieces quantities. But you can get even cheaper and add a micro USB port with STMicro STM8S based boards that can be found for 5.5 CNY (Less than $1) on Taobao.com, or – once oversea shipping is factored in – about $1.60 to $1.70 on BuyInCoins, or Aliexpress without headers, and the version with headers sells for about $2 or more. Let’s check the board specifications: […]

STMicro STM32F4 (Cortex M4) vs STM32F7 (Cortex M7) Graphics Demo

STMicro announced their latest STM32F7 micro-controller family based on ARM Cortex M7 last week. As ARM Techcon 2014 is now taking place, the company has uploaded an infomercial on their YouTube account, where STMicro and ARM representatives are interviewed about the new family, and talk about its performance, power consumption, target applications, business prospects, and so on. But there’s also an a short demo with two development kits one with a STM32F4 cortex M4 micro-controller, and the other with a STM32F7 micro-controllers. Since both MCU families are pin-to-pin compatible, the hardware is identical except for the MCU. Both kits are pre-loaded with a 3D graphics demo (ray tracer), and the board with STM32F7 completes the demo in about half the time of the one with STM32F439, allegedly with about the same power consumption (7 coremarks / mW). The video is about 8 minutes long, and the demo starts at 1:25. […]

STMicro STM32F7 Series is the First ARM Cortex-M7 MCU Family

Right after ARM’s Cortex-M7 announcement, STMicro has listed STM32F7 MCU family based on the latest ARM core on their website. The family is comprised of 20 different MCUs with various flash size, packages, and with or without a crypto/hash coprocessor. The company expects their STM32F756xx microcontrollers to be used for motor drive and application control, medical equipment, industrial applications such as PLC, inverters, and circuit breakers, printers & scanners, alarm systems, video intercom, HVAC, home audio appliances, mobile applications, Internet of Things application, and wearable devices such as smartwatches. STM32F7 MCUs share the following key features: Cortex-M7 core @ 200 Mhz (1000 CoreMark/428 DMIPS) with L1 cache (4KB I-cache, 4KB d-cache) 320KBytes of SRAM with scattered architecture: 240 Kbytes of universal data memory a 16 Kbytes partition for sharing data over the bus matrix 64 Kbytes of Tightly-Coupled Data Memory (DTCM) for time critical data handling (stack, heap…) 16 Kbytes […]

Linaro 14.06 Release with Linux Kernel 3.15 and Android 4.4.3

Linaro 14.06 has been released last week with Linux Kernel 3.15 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.44 (LSK), and Android has been updated to 4.4.3. One interesting development this month is that Android for ARMv8 (64-bit ARM) is booting on the fast models using ARM Trusted firmware and U-Boot.  SELinux has been enabled in Android. I could not see much new member hardware, except possibly B2120 (HDK) reference board for STMicro STiH407 “Monaco” STB SoC. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.15-2014.06 GATOR version 5.18 (same version as in 2014.04) updated basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT cortex-strings-arm64 topic (same as in 2014.02) updated Versatile Express ARM64 support (FVP Base and Foundation models, Juno) from ARM LT. updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT more HiP0x Cortex A15 family updates from HiSilicon LT (hip04_eth, hip04_defconfig) updated LLVM topic Big endian support (same as in 2014.05) ftrace_audit topic from […]

ARM Introduces DSP ‘Lab-in-a-Box’ For Education Combining STMicro STM32F4-Discovery Board and Wolfson Audio Card

DSP (Digital Signal Processing) courses at University have traditionally used software simulation packages (Matlab), or hands-on labs using development kits costing around $300 per student. In order to reduce costs, ARM University program and their corporate partners have launched a DSP ‘Lab-in-a-Box’ so that university students can learn DSP and audio systems with hardware selling for about $50, or over 80% cheaper than previous educational hardware. A typical DSP Lab-in-a-Box (LiB) would come with: STMicroelectronics ARM Cortex-M4-based STM32F4 Discovery MCU board Wolfson Microelectronics and Farnell element14 Wolfson Audio Card. ARM Keil MDK-Professional development tool with a 1-year renewable software license. Teaching materials such as lecture slides, code samples, and hands-on lab manuals. STM32F4-Discovery board features an STM32F407VGT6 MCU (ARM Cortex-M4F core) with 1 MB Flash, and 192 KB RAM, sensors (motion and accelerometer), a digital microphone, and audio DAC, a micro USB connector, and various buttons and LEDs. The Wolfson […]

New ARM Set-Top Box SoCs – Sigma Designs SMP8734 / SMP8756, STMicro STiH312 / StiH412, and Entropic EN7310 (Videos)

Broadcom and STMicro has the two companies that dominate the set-top box SoC market with respectively 44.7% and 34% market share by revenue in 2012, followed by Ali, a distant third at 6.9%. Other companies include Entropic, who has acquired Trident Systems, (4.4%) and Sigma Designs (1.4%) which has suffered in recent years. MIPS was the predominant architecture in the STB SoC market, but with the advent of Android, most companies have announced ARM based STB SoC for better compatibility with Android apps. TV Connect 2014, an event gathering stokeholder involved in Connected TV such as STB manufacturers, content providers, and SoC vendors, took place on March 18-20 in London, and Charbax, armdevices.net, interviewed three companies who promoted their latest ARM based STB SoCs: Sigma Designs with their SMP5734 & SMP8756/58 SoCs featuring single or dual cores Cortex A9 and a Mali-400 GPU STMicro with their STiH312 Cannes and STiH412 Monaco […]

U-Boot & Linux BSP for STMicro STM32 Discovery Board

If you want to run Linux on STM32 Discovery board, more exactly STM32F429 Discovery board, it’s now possible thanks to Emcraft Systems’ BSP for STM32F429 Discovery Board. It will only work on that particular version of the discovery board as it features 64Mbit external SDRAM, which is required for uClinux, and missing on other STM32 Discovery boards. You can either get u-boot and (uC)Linux from the company’s github account which contains the required patches, but lacks complete documentation, and a default config file for the kernel for example, or purchase a BSP ($33) with 3-month support, and pre-built u-boot and Linux binaries. There’s also publicly available documentation explaining how to flash the bootloader and the kernel among other things, and links to relevant external resources, without the need to spend any money. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a […]

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