Hello there, these will be some random ramblings about Blue Pills and stuff. Not a fully written article or so. But well… when I was searching for Blue Pills on eBay and AliExpress the other day, I found that the price of Blue Pills on eBay has risen, but is still low on AliExpress. On…
I’ve released the magic smoke
I’ve released the magic smoke. What happened here? These are the remains of an MT2492. This is a step-down converter. This chip was located on a breakout board, taking 12 Volt input, and outputting 5 Volt. I’ve designed this board last year. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the KiCad files in a hard disk crash. Nevertheless, it’s…
Adding pages
Just a quick update: I’ve started adding pages to this site. The pages are still a work in progress, and more information will be added. I have made some pages about various boards, such as the Blue Pill, Black pill, etc. Furthermore, I’ve started some pages about peripherals, such as screens and sensors. I’ll be…
32F103 Comparison (part 4)
This is a quick post about the *32F103 comparison. When talking about my comparison on IRC, I was asked if I could run the Blinky test from the Greaseweazle project. It looks like an interesting project I’ll need to check out in the future. Looking at the description of that test, it’s gonna toggle PC13…
ROMTABLE Addresses
I’ve been mentioning the ROMTABLE in a previous post. So, what is going on with the ROMTABLE? At first I looked at the ARM Debug Interface Architecture Specifications, where it stated in the MEM-AP, the BASE register contains a pointer to the ROMTABLE. As this is only available to the debugger and not from within…
32F103 Comparison (part 3)
Update 2020-06-14: Added HK32 Hello there. This is a follow up on the comparison for the *32F103 parts. We’ve got the STM32F103C8T6, GD32F103C8T6, HK32F103CBT6, CS32F103C8T6 and APM32F103C8T6. As seen in part 2, there are some differences in how they identify themselves to the debugger. Now I’ll have a look at the ROMTABLE. I can query…
DMA driver for WS2812-compatible LEDs
A few years ago I discussed WS2812-compatible (ws2812, sk6812, pd9823, …) LEDs https://andre.blaatschaap.be/2017/03/led-there-be-light-part-1/ https://andre.blaatschaap.be/2017/07/led-there-be-light-part-2/ https://andre.blaatschaap.be/2017/07/led-there-be-light-part-3/ https://andre.blaatschaap.be/2017/07/led-there-be-light-part-4/ Back in the days, I’ve discussed a few code snippets, but I’ve never came around on releasing the firmware I’ve wrote back in the days. Now I’ve uploaded the old code from back in those days to https://github.com/BlaatSchaapArchive/LEDcontroller. This…
High Level USB Device Library
Hello there! I’ve been working on a High Level USB Device Library. The reason for this is kinda related to the series of posts about the STM32F103 clones I’ve published. The thing is, the STM32Cube* HAL is BSD licensed, but the USB Middleware is SLA044. This means, the HAL can be used on any clone…
32F103 Comparison (part 2)
Update 2020-06-13: Added the HK32, updated stlink-gui/st-flash: it works with CKS32 now. Welcome back to my 32F103 Comparison. Let’s recap. The STM32F103C8T6 is a popular microcontroller by STMicroelectronics. Various Chinese manufacturers are producing parts in the same naming scheme, eg. APM32F103C8T6, BLM32F103C8T6, CS32F103C8T6, GD32F103C8T6 and MM32F103C8T6. What does this mean? There are parts, such as…
32F103 Comparison (part 1)
Update 2020-06-13: During some discussions about STM32F103 clones, I’ve sent some parts to Richi’s Lab who makes die shots of ICs. Links to the die shots for the parts have been added. Furthermore, I’ve added another part, HK32, to the comparison. I have mentioned some websites were unreachable. It turns out, the websites work when…