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Topic starter
2019-07-11 11:11 pm
Just wondering if others are using these STM32F103C8T6 boards?
They are quite inexpensive and actually have more resources than an Arduino UNO. Just to name a few:
1. They run at 72Mhz
2. They have 64kb of memory that can actually be expanded to 128kb using a special trick.
3. Every GPIO pin can serve as an External Interrupt.
4. They have a much smaller physical footprint.
4. They consume less power.
Here are photos of the "Blue Pill" and "Black Pill".
The Blue Pill is nice as it can be easily plugged into a breadboard. I like the Black Pill with the pins soldered on facing up as in the photo because the Black Pill also has four mounting holes and can be easily attached to the robot and then Dupont wires can be used for the connections.
The Blue Pill has a lot of 5-volt capabilities while the Black Pill is 3.3 volts. But it also have some 5-volt tolerant pins. The Black Pill also consumes a bit less energy so it's better suited to battery powered projects.
I should mention also that these boards are compatible with the Arduino IDE. So you can write the code in the Arduino IDE and upload it directly from there using an FTDI serial adapter.
Just curious how many people are using these boards?
DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James
2019-07-11 11:34 pm
Blimey another board I have not heard of. I was looking at the sparkfun blackboard c the other day, but managed to restrain myself, then theres all the ESP32 boards... But the Blue and Black pills look interesting so thanks for mentioning. I will put them on the list to consider the next time I'm going to buy another board.
Topic starter
2019-07-11 11:59 pm
@byron I love these boards. And they can be found at really good prices. Under $2 piece. I order them from Aliexpress 10 pcs at at time. ? So I have a couple drawers full of these in my plastic parts box. I'm currently building a very small robot based on the 3-wheel robot car chassis that Bill did a video on a while back. I'm using an Arduino Mega as the main controller, but because these smaller boards are so small, I'm thinking of putting two of these on the robot as well as motor controller, kind of like what Bill is doing on DB1. This way each motor controller can have independent interrupts for the speed and distance encoders. Then I can connect these two "pills" up to the Mega using I2C like Bill's doing on the DB1 project.
I'll basically be using Bill's design for DB1 on a teensy-weensy robot. ?
I'm hoping to try to keep up with Bill. Thanks to the recent Jazz Festival I'd been able to do a little bit of catching up.
DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James