UDP Between STM32-F4 Discovery Boards

February 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

stm32-f4-udp

[The Backwoods Engineer] tested out a new accessory kit for the STM32-F4 Discovery board. The image above shows two boards communicating with the UDP protocol. Notice the extra PCB into which each Discovery board has been plugged. This is a third-party add-on which adds Ethernet, RS-232, SD card slot, and a connector for LCD or Camera. We’ve had one of these F4 Discovery boards on hand for a while and haven’t figured out a good way to connect external hardware to the huge dual pin-headers. This doesn’t solve the problem — the base board also includes dual headers to break-out all the pins — but having Ethernet, serial, and SD certainly reduces the need to add all that much more. The other drawback to the hardware is that the sample firmware is targeted at the IAR Embedded Workbench which is neither free, nor in the realm of affordable for hobbyists.

The NIC used on the baseboard has auto-crossover capabilities so the boards were connected using a regular Cat6 patch cable. This example has the boards constantly sending UDP packets with the module on the right reporting status information to a terminal via the serial connection.

A Guide And Helper Script For ARM Cross Compiling Toolchain On A Mac

January 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

mac-arm-toolchain-script

[Mitchell Johnson] wanted to develop for the STM32F4 Discovery board on his Mac. There are a few ready-to-use options when it comes to the ARM toolchains, but he couldn’t find one that satisfied all of his needs. After working out all the kinks he wrote a guide and tweaked a script to install the ARM tools on a Mac.

The problem he had with some of the pre-packaged tool chains is that they didn’t support the hardware floating point functionality of STM’s Cortex-M4 chips. To get around this without doing his own ground-up build (which can be quite a challenge) he forked the Summon Arm Toolchain script and modified it to include ST-Link support in the build. One of the things that we like about that script is it installs the tools in a sub-directory of your home directory. This way if you already have another ARM toolchain you can switch between the two by tweaking your PATH variable.

[Scot] Whips Up Breakout Board For His ARM Breakout Board

December 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Scot Kornak] got his hands on the new STM32 Discovery Board. He got his as a free giveaway, but at only $18 he probably would have picked one up anyway. His one complaint about the device is that he dual pin-headers which break out the ARM processor’s pins are not the most convenient for hooking up external components. He decided to make his own breakout board which would give him a more robust solution for the components he uses all the time.

The protoboard that he chose as a base is quite interesting. It’s made for interfacing DIL pin headers just like the ones on the STM32F4 Discovery board. Each row of the dual header is carried down the board perpendicular to those headers. [Scot] cut the traces underneath the STM32 board to isolate the right and left sides. He then added RS232 hardware to one side, while including another pair of DIL headers to break out the rest of the unused pins.

This is all he’s got so far, but there’s plenty of room on the base board to add more as the need arises.