Korishan
Administrator
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2017
- Messages
- 7,525
Some time ago I decided to get some STM32F103C boards, aka Blue Pills. I ordered 5 of them from a chinese seller. The boards were comparatively priced as many others, around $2.50USD. The caveat was that I needed to wait almost 2 months before I got them. No big issue as being in the US, we know we order and then wait a long time. That was expected.
Well, once I got the boards, I proceeded to go through the steps of setting them up so I can use them with the Arduino IDE. The first one was having issues, so I tried another one. Same issue. I figured I must of been doing something wrong, so I reached out to the guys as stm32duino.com forum to get some professional help. In the end, it was ruled I had dud ICs. I had tried all 5 of the boards, and all were duds. I even sent oneto rev0 to get a second opinion, and he came back with the same result: "They were dead, Jim". Another thing that was noted, is that the ICs on the boards I had gotten were 32k flash. They were supposed to be 64k. According to the datahsheet, 64k and 128k are the flash sizes for the STM32F103Cx based boards.
I looked around on eBay for the boards in the US market, as I didn't want to wait almost 2 months get anymore boards. The price in the US is twice anywhere else, and several sellers tacked on shipping too. So I decided to look into building my own board. I did a BOM and the parts were cheaper than what they were on eBay.Granted, I needed to build these boards before they were functional, but it was a start. I know time is money, but time can also *save* you money, too. If you don't do something valuable with your time, then it's just wasted, right?
So I decided to see about designing the board layout, andI fired up EasyEDA and looked at the schematic from stm32duino.com on the STM32F103C boards. Thendesignedthe layout based on the schematics. This took about 4 hours in total. I've gotten a lot better with the designer since I first started with EasyEDA.
The pcbs and the parts will come from JLPCB and LCSC respectively. So I know the pcbs and the components are legit and good quality. The SMT32F103Cx ICs will be as they are supposed to be. No fakes
I figured that I could make these boards and sell them to the US market with better quality parts, and faster shipping (because even the "US" labeled stores are sometimes not really in the US (shocker!)) than the other stores. The first batch will be the basic STM32F103C8T6 ICs,
* 64k flash
* 20k sram
* 2 SPI
* 2 I2C
* 3 USART
* 1 USB
* 1 CAN
* 37 GPIOs
* 2 10-bit ADCs
* 72 Mhz CPU
* 2.0V - 3.6V operating range
* -40C - 85C operating temperature range
Future versions will have the option to have the 128K flash and/or one of the other ICs for the STM32F103x family. This can give up to 2x 16-bit ADCs &80 GPIOs.
I have started a KickStarter Campaign. Please feel free to ask any questions, or add suggestions.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/korishan/honest-stm32f103c-breadboard-pcb?ref=f243s2
No More Fake MCUs!
Well, once I got the boards, I proceeded to go through the steps of setting them up so I can use them with the Arduino IDE. The first one was having issues, so I tried another one. Same issue. I figured I must of been doing something wrong, so I reached out to the guys as stm32duino.com forum to get some professional help. In the end, it was ruled I had dud ICs. I had tried all 5 of the boards, and all were duds. I even sent oneto rev0 to get a second opinion, and he came back with the same result: "They were dead, Jim". Another thing that was noted, is that the ICs on the boards I had gotten were 32k flash. They were supposed to be 64k. According to the datahsheet, 64k and 128k are the flash sizes for the STM32F103Cx based boards.
I looked around on eBay for the boards in the US market, as I didn't want to wait almost 2 months get anymore boards. The price in the US is twice anywhere else, and several sellers tacked on shipping too. So I decided to look into building my own board. I did a BOM and the parts were cheaper than what they were on eBay.Granted, I needed to build these boards before they were functional, but it was a start. I know time is money, but time can also *save* you money, too. If you don't do something valuable with your time, then it's just wasted, right?
So I decided to see about designing the board layout, andI fired up EasyEDA and looked at the schematic from stm32duino.com on the STM32F103C boards. Thendesignedthe layout based on the schematics. This took about 4 hours in total. I've gotten a lot better with the designer since I first started with EasyEDA.
The pcbs and the parts will come from JLPCB and LCSC respectively. So I know the pcbs and the components are legit and good quality. The SMT32F103Cx ICs will be as they are supposed to be. No fakes
I figured that I could make these boards and sell them to the US market with better quality parts, and faster shipping (because even the "US" labeled stores are sometimes not really in the US (shocker!)) than the other stores. The first batch will be the basic STM32F103C8T6 ICs,
* 64k flash
* 20k sram
* 2 SPI
* 2 I2C
* 3 USART
* 1 USB
* 1 CAN
* 37 GPIOs
* 2 10-bit ADCs
* 72 Mhz CPU
* 2.0V - 3.6V operating range
* -40C - 85C operating temperature range
Future versions will have the option to have the 128K flash and/or one of the other ICs for the STM32F103x family. This can give up to 2x 16-bit ADCs &80 GPIOs.
I have started a KickStarter Campaign. Please feel free to ask any questions, or add suggestions.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/korishan/honest-stm32f103c-breadboard-pcb?ref=f243s2
No More Fake MCUs!