Today I Received...

[mk79]

I've done a ton of projects with Atmels and Arduinos but this week I had an encounter with a Bluepill board and the STM32 Arduino Toolchain. I managed to get everything working, but that was an amazingly painful experience, I'd like a book about that

[NormanDunbar]

I might look into that - for book 3 maybe! Someone, my technical reviewer, wants me to do the same book for the ARM based Arduinos.

I've heard of Bluepill, but never looked into it. Yet.


Cheers,
Norm.

[NormanDunbar]

Ok, do not type "bluepill" into Google at work. Just don't!

Cheers,
Norm.

[NormanDunbar]

Is it too late to point you at this? https://maker.pro/arduino/tutorial/how- ... rduino-ide - which does make it look far too simple.

Cheers,
Norm.

[mk79]

From the linked article:
There is also a micro USB port on the board, but unfortunately it cannot be used for programming because it does not have an associated boot loader.

Well, my main misconception was probably that USB and not UART was the standard way to go for an Arduino-compatible device. Mind you, I got the USB bootloader working and can now update the chip without fiddling with any jumpers, but it was as I said quite a trip for somebody who has never used the chip before...

[NormanDunbar]

In which case, nicely done. Some of these microcontrollers can be a right pain! I stick with Arduinos or my stock of ATtiny85s or my own "design" NormDuino, which is just an ATmega328P on a breadboard but running at 8MHz rather than 16, so no crystal and two extra pins to play with.

However, I might take a look at the Bluepill as it's reputed to cost only $2. Even as a Scotsman living in Yorkshire, I can cope with that!

By the way, do you use the Arduino IDE to program your kit? Or are you an Atmel Studio man? I play with the IDE when I need Arduino code, and PlatformIO for plain AVR stuff, although it does do Arduino code too.


Cheers,
Norm.

[mk79]

However, I might take a look at the Bluepill as it's reputed to cost only $2. Even as a Scotsman living in Yorkshire, I can cope with that!

Yeah, the price is the reason I've had them laying around without ever using them until I found the QLAN project and wanted to try it for fun viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2829#p27829. Also got a cheap ST-Link v2, yet another way for programming these boards.

By the way, do you use the Arduino IDE to program your kit? Or are you an Atmel Studio man? I play with the IDE when I need Arduino code, and PlatformIO for plain AVR stuff, although it does do Arduino code too.

I mostly used Atmel Studio back in the day (so about 2009ish). It supported the Atmel Dragon debugger, which was a big plus. For a while I tried VisualMicro, but didn't use it enough to justify buying it. These days I often do quick prototypes or changes to existing Arduino code, so I grudgingly use the IDE, mostly not even with Arduinos but with ESP8266s for example. It's less painful to use the official IDE when you do more exotic things like that. I'm hoping the Pro IDE will be compatible but better.

Cheers, Marcel

[Derek_Stewart]

Whoo hoo! It has arrived.
Not that I am chuffed to bits or anything!

IMG_20200505_124534.jpg

Cheers,
Norm.

Hi Norman,

Looks interesting, but I see from the Amazon advert, only Kindle or paperback, I would liked a PDF version...

[NormanDunbar]

Hi Derek,

Go directly to https://www.apress.com/gb/book/9781484257890 where you can order the pdf and I think, a free ePub version as well.

Thanks.


Cheers,
Norm.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Norm,

Thank you for the information, I must of missed the epub and pdf version included with the ebook purchase.