So glad to see this video Ralph, you are talking about my favorite chips STM32s! I wanted to share some knowledge I've collected about these chips and the blue pill boards. Blue pill USB: there is nothing "wrong" with the USB on your blue pill (with the exception of the pull up resistor mod which I see you did). The issue is the expected behavior of the board out of the box. On nano/uno boards the USB port always shows up because it's hooked up to the FTDI/CH340/u32 chip that then forwards to the Rx/Tx on the Arduino boards. The blue pill hooks the data lines to the STM32 chip directly. The STM32 chip supports USB in its hardware and is very sophisticated but requires running code to be enabled. The maple mini has a boot loader flashed to it that presents the USB as a virtual com port and acts like your typical uno optiboot boot loader, letting you flash over USB. You can put a similar boot loader on the blue pill using your FTDI programming method or the ST-Link and then use USB from that point on - wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Bootloader. I personally prefer using the ST-Link so I can SWD debug. You also don't have to faf around with boot loader jumpers or resetting the board. I have 1 warning for you that caused me plenty debugging pain. If for any reason you configure the SWDCLK or SWDIO pins off in your flashed code you will lose the ability to use your ST-Link until the boot0 pin is enabled (putting you back into the default boot loader).

Thank you for taking the time to show the row of power for the Nano, STM32 and ESP32, you made this so much easier to understand. Keep Broadcasting!!!

Brilliant. Loving your vids Ralph. Thanks for taking the time to produce and share them.

Your long videos and informative content really got me hooked onto electronics. Bought a stm32 recently didn't know how to use them, now I know I can ditch my nano

very good, it help me a lot, i am just waiting for my stm32 boards to come now

I’ve had this in my ebay watchlist for a couple of months but don’t get much time to play with my current boards recently but after watching the video, a couple are on order. I wish I’d noticed the video before I ordered three nano’s this morning. Although I only paid £1.20ish. Cheers for another video

Great video as usual looking forward to see what the new bord is.

Awesome expertise, Ralph! And more importantly so much in time, love it; as I've also ordered a bunch of these just a few days ago (chinatown-delivery gonna take a while). Wasn't aware that they aren't flashable thru the micro USB from-the-box but knew that they don't have any UART converters like CH340, so it does make sense that you need to dedicate a bit of microcontroller's memory to flash a boot layer for the device to act like it has that converter built in. This is the amazing part of those boards that you can make any hardware device that is connected straight from a microcontroller to your PC avoiding any middlemen like CH340 with their restrictions!

Hi Ralph.....great video as always, thanks! About those jumpers, i had that problem too...but if you put a little length of solder wire through the inside hole you can pull it up easily! Just an alternative for others, as you dont need it any more...lol!

Al fin alguien que te enseña como la gente... Ya mismo me acabo de comprar un stm32 y un ftdi...... Vamos a ver como nos va.... Saludos

Great stuff. Once again a brilliant presentation.

As usual, Good Stuff from Mr Bacon.

Awesome video, Ralph. I know you still have a lot to demonstrate on the STM but I have to jump the gun. What first drew me to the STM32 family was the built in RTC. i.e. a module on the chip that has ALL the abilities of the DS3232 (which cost you an additional at £3.20 [$4.00]) on eBay, but you get it FREE! on the STM32. The STLink is a lot cheaper inline programmer than the AVR ICE but has a lot of capability over and above uploading sketches . I do love this family. I still get a huge feeling of achievement getting a attiny85 to complete a project (my OCD response to employing redundant technology) but the price of STM32 modules can often result in a cheaper solution than using the ATTiny85s. No more spoilers. I look forward to your future enthusiastic videos on this device - and the enthusiasm is very appropriate.

Got it working! Had to set my device to STM Nucleo in order for PC13 to be accepted.

Sir, your video helped me a lot to get started with STM 32 F103C...Along side your video, i was practicing on the STM 32 and noticed that the program will just get uploaded even if i don not shift boot loader pins from 0 to 1. Because ST link V2 is designed for STM 32 and they have managed to have minimum hassel with their own STM32 board during programming. So, i just wanted to add this that uploding can be done with out shifting bootloader pins. And Thanks a lot for that much great, informative yet helpful video.

I have a few of those STM boards also, They are great.

Another great video about a new board! Thanks.

Videos like this have got me started on the Blue Pill this week. :-) Using STM32 CubeMX and System Workbench instead of Arduino IDE. Things I wish I knew before I started: 1)When using ST-Link, there's no need to press reset or move those jumpers. But make sure your CubeMX project enables the SWD pins as Serial Wire Debug (System Core>SYS peripheral), otherwise you'll brick the Blue Pill and have to faff around with holding the reset button while connecting in order to unbrick it. 2)The 32.768kHz crystal pins are connected to the edge connectors. Breadboard loading made my crystal run at half speed. If you want the RTC, don't connect those ports to the breadboard! (I went the whole hog and cut the PCB tracks).

Nice. Liked your explanation. Convinced me to finally try a couple.

Ha. Thanks to your video I finally bought a Blue pill board. I've got an STM32F4 discovery which I've had for years and still love but hey, you can never have too many boards.:)

You don't need to change the boot header when uploading using the st-link, you only need to do that when uploading using the serial adapter, don't know if someone else pointed it out in the comments section though. And nice video btw

Wish you had done this a couple years back when I was trying to figure all this out! :) I was able to get it working after a bit of googling. What I like about them which you didn't mention is that the A2D converters are 12 bit instead of 10 bit. It can be quite handy when you want a bit more accuracy. For example you could make a little DC voltage/current/power meter with a few resisters and a cheap LCD. An ESP32 would definitely be overkill for that.

Thanks, I have had one of these little deals in my box now for about 4 years, never have figured out how to make it do anything but just sit there and make me angry! I bought the little programmer as well but just could not get it going, now if I can just remember where I threw it last time I tried to make it work.....

I've been using the STM32 for a while. The board is just great! With ebay you can also get the 128k version of the STM32 with a little luck. Great video !!

I've been your biggest critic. But now, you are making sense to me. This sort of big picture video really helps. Please stand back from all the Arduino cancer and do more 50,000' stuff. You're good at it.

I have this thing for through holes on pc boards. If they are designed for pins, I simply have to solder them in. Because of this, I once ordered a large number of them and keep them on my bench for quick application. So it is, I have several of the FTDI serial boards, all with the pins soldered onto the sides of the board, I find that many times when running a 3 volt board there is a requirement for a 5 volt input on a board hooked up to the system or some such craziness, you can hook directly to the side ports to get 5 volts in the 3.3 mode, or conversely 3.3 volts off the 5 volt setup. I have found times when I needed a separate reset from the serial and hooked to the reset pin on the side as well as the one on the back for the main chip. Lots of crazy things can come up that are easily solved by simply adding a few pins to the side of the FTDI boards.

With STLink you can flash program without changing jumper position, only it need to be changed if flashing using FTDI.

Hi Ralph, I have built a few projects using the Bluepill. Funny thing is, I have no problem using the USB with windows 10 using multiple PCs and notebooks without any modifications to the board and use the STM32duino bootloader to program the device from the Arduino IDE. Bootloading using the USB means it does not require a FTDI USB to serial adapter.

2021 update: STM32duino now makes it(the blue pill) a lot easier to use the usb port to program via arduino ide. You just need to flash their new bootloader via USB to UART and it's done.

Thank you for the video. I didn't know I can program it with regular FDTI too, still have to figure out the configuration. I noticed you have added a resistor to the board. do you mind telling me what is it used for?

Hello Ralph, it will be very nice to help us to know how we should do to make our microcontrollers adaptable for industrial use, like main protections against hard environments. Thanks a lot. And is arduino suitable for industrial scope by some components changing.

For those silly little jumpers, and for fine wire work when I build on perfboard, I like a small (4") pair of long-nose pliers. Or "needle-nose", if you prefer.

Hello Ralph, I am new to micro controllers and have been learning a lot from your videos. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise. I have had some very good success (so far) with the ATMEL based microprocessors but have run out of program storage space. So, after seeing your videos on STM32, I decided to give the Maple Mini a try. Every time I upload a sketch to the Maple Mini, it appears to be uploading then the Arduino IDE throws a "Access Denied" error. I believe this happened in one of your videos but since your focus wasn't on the Maple itself, you seemed to just move past it. I would really appreciate any advice you can offer on this...too may late nights and my brain is numb from trying to figure this out.

Finally! He sees the light and uses the STLink. I couldn't watch the other two videos. I spent too long there myself before I stopped trying to make the STM32 an arduino and started to use it as intended. I think in fairness the Black Pill could probably parallel emulate about 20 Nano's.

The compiler flags are for the executable speed rather than the code speed with O3 being the fastest running speed. The code may be a bit larger than the unoptimized code.

Just found this video and it is great. I was wondering if you mignt show how to program a samd21 chip with a jlink or ?? programmer. I need to put a arduino bootloader on one of these chips for a project. Can you put a program on the samd21 direct with out installing a bootloader. The way you present what you are working on seems to be straight forward and clear. Thanks again for your efforts to teach us.

Very informative video

Good video. Keep them coming ;)

Another great thing about the Blue Pill is that it supports 16 external interrupts. I was working on a project to interface to a Bally pinball machine and I need 6 external interrupts to catch some unclocked signals coming out of the Bally MPU and none of the Arduino family could support that.

You should give the STM32CubeIDE a try. It's a new IDE released for STM Controllers a few months ago which includes a complete toolchain with gcc-Compiler. You can configure the needed peripherie by an graphical configurator and this IDE is based on Eclipse, so you can take advantage of the built in texteditor. Arduino may is a good IDE to get in touch with Embedded Systems, but as soon as the Projects get a little bit more complex it prevents you from developing clean and effective Code. Sorry for my bad english :)

With the stlink you can leave jumpers in run

Did you notice that once in the video you said JCLpcb (@ 23:47) instead of JLCpcb? I bet you worked on IBM mainframes didn't you? So did I. Thanks for showing this.

Have you ever thought of attaching that 3-pin jumper to a toggle switch for development purposes? Then you could toggle between run and program by flipping the switch, and once you are done developing you just replace the switch with a jumper in the run position.

Hi Ralph Using ST-Link I think you can leave the jumper in the run position for upload and run. I.e. you never have to move it. Try it. Nice vid thanks.

I like to have an arsenal of chips up my sleeve, ESP8266 small Wi-Fi attached devices like mains switches, temperature monitors etc. ESP32 Wi-Fi but require more computing power. Microchip Pic's for small low powered things, standalone projects. Arduinos for throwing something together fast. I think there is no one stop shop microcontroller that fits all, maybe it time to see if there is a slot for an STM need to get the Arduino working with Eclipse as I'm getting fed up their ide. Did I say great vid as always

I recently picked up a pack of 2. Same as you, I could not get the USB to work, but I do have an FTDI cable from my Arduino Pro Mini. Everything worked nicely EXCEPT, I had to do a hard reset every time I performed a power on/power off cycle in order to get the code to run. I eventually just went ahead and put an Arduino Pro Mini in the project instead. And yes, those jumpers are a huge hassle.

Hi, thanks for the video. I just got my first one and I've one question - is there a way to use the st-link for Serial monitor? Since there is no com port I can't get it to work with AruinoIDE or PlatformIO. Flashing works fine, but not the monitor.

I have used the stm32 based boards in the past and was impressed by the capabilities. You do not have to worry about running out of memory. Lots of registers but that just reflects the additional capabilities you have compared to an arduino. I do like the simplicity of an 8 bit micro and it's straight forward reference manual. Most times you do not need the speed or accuracy of these higher end micros. I did an audio project one time with an arduino uno and it was terrible. I am sure the blue pill would of made the audio much better quality.

You do not always have to recompile everything! You can also simply use a programmer to load the HEX file into the microcontroller. The HEX file created by the Arduino IDE can be found at: C: \ Users \ Owner \ AppData \ Local \ Temp \ arduino_build_810344!

Hi Ralph, After watching this video I was inspired to look at installing the bootloader again. Way back in December of 2017 I got 5 of these. I went throught the process of installing the bootloader on one of them, as well as changing the R10 resistors to 1k5. The bootloader worked with out a problem on that first one. I never tried to put the boot loader on the other 4 as I had also purchased an ST link V2 clone and had always used that. To cut a long story short, I decided to bite the bullet and do the bootloader on the other 4. I downloaded the generic_boot20_pc13.bin from the Roger Clarke's github and flashed it onto the other using the ST link, guess what .... none of them worked! After two long days and nights of trying everything I could think of, I finally gave up and went through my backups and found the original bootloader bin file I had installed in December 2017, flashed that and to my complete surprise it worked! I had a look on github and tracked down the original file, it's dated 9 Aug 2017 and can be found here - github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/STM32duino-bootloader/blob/d19bcaf1ef044eb5e09b772f7a1d7c158c3c2976/binaries/generic_boot20_pc13.bin I don't know what the problem with the latest bootloader is but for me at least the older one works perfectly. I make no promises but maybe this will fix your issues as well. Best regards, Glenn

Black pill boards seem to have a USB boot loader. I even checked the uC's datasheet and i can confirm that. As for the blue pill, datasheet only said that it has a USART1 bootloader. The USB port isn't just a programming port like with an arduino, because the stm32f103c8 has a usb peripheral inside. I even programmed it to behave like a mouse with a joystick with STM32CubeIDE. And because it was a big sketch, I personally don't recommend burning a usb bootloader in the blue pills if you want to eventually move on to bigger projects. (The blue pills I have are genuine. Bought these for about 7-8$ CAD per unit)

Hey Ralph, I have a few clones of this board (yeah, the "fake" ones) that I got for like $2 each a couple of years ago and I recently finally got some time to test. Using the STM's IDE was easy with the ST-Link v2 (a cheap clone again), but I wanted to use the USB and the Arduino IDE. So I am running Windows 11, I struggled a few hours (watching some videos and reading some blogs), but finally got it working with the right bootloader and drivers. Now I can upload the sketches with Arduino IDE and use the serial monitor for prints just like the uno/nano without any issues. I'll have to trace back my viewing history just to remember exactly which guide helped me figure things out.

Hi Ralph, Loved the vid. I went out and bought some. I like working out the engineering behind this stuff. So how do you load a bootloader onto the ST chip in the first place, if it were a mere chip without a board? I imagine the firmwares and binaries from github, right? Or, if one is about to use the Arduino IDE, which presents by itself a good library resource, I imagine the bootloader would definitely be crucial for guiding the flash procedure where to land its start location. What if you dispensed with all this bootloader stuff, just wrote directly to boot0. No bootloader at all. Wouldn't that work as well? I'm curious about the design decision for bootloader operations. I have an engineering degree, but the embedded part was not immediately available for myself as an academic direction, RF and analog person.

if you want lots of control over the peripherals of the stm32, use stm32cubeIDE to make the code, get the ST flash loader demo, get the compiled .bin from C:/Users/yourname/STM32cubeIDE/yourproject, and upload it using an FTDI serial adapter. There’s a tutorial somewhere on youtube for it, but that’s the best way to get your code onto the blue pill other than the USB bootloader and the arduino IDE.

Ralph, I have been using the Blue Pill in projects for several years and have had about 5 boards build by JLCPCB to carry them. I have been using the USB port and STM32duino bootloader without any problems on Windows 10. I found everything I needed to set the whole thing up on RideLifeWithGrace's website. The best thing about getting the bootloader installed is that you no longer need to move the jumpers and most times you don't have to even hit the reset button. If you have not seen it, check out RideLifeWithGrace's video - ukposts.info/have/v-deo/gmeUqJp9mHiLk2Q.html . The only problem with the video is that it is not narrated - all the instructions are typed on the screen. But, it is still the best resource I have found. And if you have not found it already, check out www.stm32duino.com/ - it's a great board with lots of help topics.

The micro usb does work, you just have to check underneath the board, there are 2 resistors, one of them is wrong and you have to replace it, some boards doesn't even come with the resistor and you have to add it.After that you can actually upload a sketch that lets you run a virtual com from that usb, so you can flash the micro with it.

You can upload a USB flash bootloader. It will eat up 8k of flash but theres still 64k left, which is plenty. I did this to mine, can flash from the arduino ide.

I had though it was a red pill / blue pill reference to the matrix... I will happily continue to think this.

love your work and of course you make it look soo simple. I watched this video and ordered my stm32f103 from China. Tried to use FTDI failed, ordered STlink no brainer. Now I am lost with lots of zips , bins and snippets all over the show. One question could you try loading sketch to STM32 using Raspberry Pi running PlatormIO. Or do you know of another UKpostsr who has. Again love your vids from downunder.

The USB works fine. But you might have to replace R10 and flash it with a USB bootloader. Google for instructions.

Nice video ! Can i use a ftdi TTL-232-3v3 cable to program the stm32f103c8 ?

Ralph, what IDE were you using for the Speed test upload? (Time 25:30)

Hi Ralph and thanks for another very interesting video. I tried the dandrown STM32 install for Arduino IDE but it fails to get SPI working properly; the MOSI, CS both work correctly but CLK randomly decides to pulse. It isn't at a wrong frequency and it is limited to when SPI activity is expected. Have you run SPI using the dandrown/Arduino SPI library? [ps I fully appreciate that you are not responsible for dandrown or Arduino SPI just wondering if you had used the SPI bus on STM32?]

Hi Ralph. I found your channel while searching for a solution about STM32 not recognised as usb device. The last 6 stm32 bought from ebay from 2 different suppliers have this problem after flashing the bootloader.You mentioned that you found an older bootloader with which your module works as expected.Where can i download this booloader? Thank you

..very interesting, thanks very much :)

I would not want a jumper sticking up like that. I agree having the tab is convenient while working with the board but for me personally i would replace the tabbed jumpers with standard ones to keep a lower profile and less likely to be knocked/snagged and bending the pins. Just personal preference.

Hi Ralph! :-) I finally finished the "Demo" video of my version of a constant vacuum operated "Pick -N- Place" tool for SMD components with a little theory behind my design as well as tips on cutting holes in rubber and plastic. This was my first (and possibly my last "How To -DIY") video. I'm not very good at commentary!! But perhaps with some practice it may get better. :-) It took a little time to figure out which camera and lens combo to use, it was a trial and error approach but I think the filming portion turned out fairly good. I used to produce a fair amount of promotional videos for our local Parks and Recreation Department but I never done my own commentary, I always let the Parks and Rec staff do the talking. :-) One tip I failed to mention here or in the demo video was to place those component packaging strips flat on your bench before attempting to peel back the clear plastic strip that holds the components in the strip, peeling the plastic back while holding the strip in your hand is a sure way to cause you to lose a few parts! Placing or even taping the strip to the bench with double sided tape helps to insure that the components won't fly off somewhere never to be seen again. :-) Here's the link to my Demo Video: ukposts.info/have/v-deo/aIl4bJ-nkaJ-wHk.html Hope this helps! Have a great day, Ralph!! :-) Joe

Great Video 👍 Do you still recommend that board?

Have a few of them in my arsenal for over a year now but haven't done anything with them yet. What's the current state of compatibility with the several Arduino libraries? Can it run any Arduino lib now? Thanks.

Compiling with /O1 /O2 or /O3 are not about the speed of compilation, they are different settings (or main settings) for what types of optimizations to compile the program with. F.ex; The compiler will inline functions (meaning copy/paste the function into the function it is called from, thus removing the need for the program to jump. This increases code size but is faster), or unrolling short for-loops (meaning that instead of executing one loop and the a jump to the beginning of the loop, copy/paste the loops after each other in succession thus removing the need for jumps, again increasing code size but also speed), or optimize the code to use less memory but more storage, or reducing code size but use more memory and/or perform slower. The flags O1, O2 can further be subdivided into several other flags for compile options, where you f.ex specify if you want to disable, enable or favor inlining, etc etc. Debug code is no opimizations with some extra stuff thrown in, but you can also have debug code with optimization to different levels. Regarding optimizations, you can also mark functions with the inline keyword, but this does not guarantee inlining. Inlining a function is always a choice for the compiler. And the inline keyword is more used to be able to make definitions as well as declarations of functions in header files than actual inlining. But, there are other pragma directives (depending on the compiler, MSVC has the __force_inline f ex ) which can result in optimizations, provided you do not use /Od (disable optimizations) when compiling. For the specifics on how to optimize code you should always check the compiler you are using, since you are entering compiler specific territory where what works with one compiler may not work on another. Even the general flags: O1, O2 O3 will result in different levels of optimization with different compilers, BUT, the general "what am i trying to achieve" will be the same, kind of.. :)

You can program the blue pill via usb, you just have to download the maple bootloader to it. To use it as a 'serial' device, you have to download the VCP drivers on the STMicroelectronics website, on Linux it should run with no problems. If after all of this, the bluepill is still not working, make sure the USB pull up resistors have the correct values, the original schematics for the board came out wrong so it comes with a 10k when it needs to be 1k5.

I think the future is for arm 32 bit microcontrollers, cause they are cheap more powerfull and a lot of periphiral inside. Thanks for tuto!

Great video. I however have to say that this STM32 board has not completely convinced me. For the moment I use the UNO for development and the Pro mini as "final" board. Some Pro Mini boards run also on 32 Mhz so the gain in speed is minimal (and not needed for my projects). The lack of RAM and flash memory is more an issue for me. The big advantage for this STM32 board I see is a sharp price for a lot of RAM and flash memory.

Interesting. I have had a couple of these blue pills for a year or more... and a maple mini... but never got around to doing more than blinking the LED on them. I also just got a little SAMd21 board this week in a nano-ish board design labeled as a Wemos SAMD21 mini. I really should play around with all of them now. I have been collecting a bunch of 12+ bit analogue peripherals for AVR projects recently, and in the recent past I got into modern C-optimized(XC8) PIC16/18 stuff for their integrated analogue peripherals, all while ignoring these STM32 alternatives. The STM32F103 has decent specs on the first few pages of the datasheet and I really should have gotten deeper into it. I started playing with the PIC16F171x series after encountering the author of a book on it in the comments section of a Microchip upload. I haven't made it very far into the PICs either as paying for the compiler is just dumb IMO and I'll only play with the free version. I got caught up in the idea of an integrated DAC, ADC, configurable logic, op amp, comparator, and software defined pinout with configuration/reconfiguration on the fly. It seemed like a cool combo before I realized I prefer a community of friendly open source hobbyists over paying for nonsense and reinventing the wheel with my own libraries. I played with the PICs instead of the STM32 that I got at around the same time. Microchip's business practices are too outdated for me to take them seriously. It's the 1980's-90's corporate type exploitation even an American like myself can see and loath. Anyways, I assume you're going to try to fix the blue pill's USB connection design flaw with that new PCB. I've seen some forum posts where people say the 103's hardware USB implementation has some kind of odd 32 bit stack or register 'thingy' where the industry standard is 64 bits or something like that. I don't know if this is a big issue or whatnot but when I read that forum post (sorry I don't even recall where) awhile back there were several people saying similar type stuff. They were mostly talking over my head, but the take away I got was that the people that were developing open hardware/software support for the 103 stuff decided to move to the STM32F4xx series as it is more well rounded, conventional, and more powerful. Like I said, it was mostly a conversation that went way over my pay grade. I could have easily misunderstood the context of what I was reading. I just mentally made a note to check out a F4xx board one day if I ever get around to it, and that there are a few issues with the F103 stuff that prevented it from completely taking over the hobby market despite it's price to performance ratio on the surface. One last bit of info I vaguely recall while reading up about these. Apparently the way ST makes these chips within a series/family means they all contain the same silicon die. I know other chips like analogue stuff with a range of performance specs within a single part number (like grade A=.1%/B=.5%/D=3%) are usually just the result of testing and grading each die on a waffer during production and separating the better ones. I didn't realize this type of grading is also done within digital hardware. Apparently the F101 used in the "ST Link V2" clones is the same die as the F103 but it specifically does not have USB hardware according to the datasheet. However, the Chinese manufacturer is just using the USB hardware anyways as if the F101 is a F103. I don't know if they are able to purchase chips that have failures within the same block but still retain most USB functionality or what other types of trickery they are using. I just thought it is super interesting that they are hacking the hardware like this. If you open up the ST Link V2 you have, you will probably find the same F101 w/USB conundrum I did :-) Thanks for the upload. -Jake

Hi Ralph, great video as always! just a tip for you that may help: You only need to move the jumpers when you use the Serial interface to download. With the STLink it just works:) Also to be clear moving the jumper before reset is not to get it going it is to ensure the program is saved i.e. if you reset before moving the jumper in serial mode you will erase the program. Also as far as getting the Blue Pill to work with USB download I have read it is because they have the wrong pull up resister 10k instead of 5k1 if I recall (It is a copy of a copy and they used more common components) Is the resister soldered on your one an attempt to fix that? I assume as you are building your own you can fix that and show us in another video:) Look forward to it.

Sorry if this is old news or only half of the story but apparently you don't need to move the jumpers when programming with the STlink v2 dongle.

Hi Ralph. I'm a bit of a novice, but would you recommend the STM32 or the ESP32? I've done a little bit with arduino and I need a bit more memory and speed, hence wanting to start working with the other boards. I have both here now to play with but only fiddled with the ESP32 so far. Interested to hear your views

Goto stmdunio forums, USB works fine in our libs but yes easier to use stlink or JTAG , reason it has issues is resistors on some bluepills, blackpill is the fixed version.

AT LAST after over 6 years of sceaming "I HAVE BEEN SCREWED" (Well maybe it was 3 years, getting old and time is nearly a bland stretch of nothing any more) I can at last get this little thing to do SOMETHING I even purchased the STLINK deal several years ago thinking it would work, but I have always been using the wrong setup in Arduino! I did it once again whilst watching this I did a search for the json file and used one off the internet, kept giving me all sorts of errors till I read your extra stuff and used the one you furnished! That was the bugger. Still can't get blink to work right but everything seems to be uploading and getting the official ok-dokey from Arduino.

The USB port is fully useable (as an "virtual" UART for example), but the F103s can't use USB for their bootloader (there are a lot of other higher specced STM32s that have the USB available in the bootloader). That is the unbrickable bootloader, that's there in hardware ROM. You can flash your own bootloader (takes up flash then obviously) so you can use USB in the bootloader, if you need to. Although with an ST-link I don't see any point for that, and even better it gets rid of the nedd to fddle with the jumpers. I was blown away by the peripherals available in the STM32s, even the lowest ones like the F103s. Multiple ADCs, multiple UARTs, I2Cs and SPIs, all remappable to different pins, so you hardly have any pin collisions, all of that connected by multichannel DMA and synchronisable with multiple timers. You can make a simple data aquisition device for example, spitting out data onto a serial port, where the CPU does hardly anything except for starting a DMA transfer and timer.

Do these significantly clock higher than SAMD21 or the arduino Due? How is the interrupt compatability?

Nice review But is is a 3.3 V system is it not? Is it 5V tolerant? Thanks for sharing :-)

The guys at stm32duino say that this blue pill has wrong components on the USB data lines, you have to fix that before using the USB. The BLACK pills (very similar boards, same mcu) also have good USB component values. If you are interested in fixing the board, look up on stm32duino wiki. After you installed the USB bootloader (also documented on stm32duino wiki), don't forget to switch back the boot jumper to flash, otherwise the board may erase the USB bootloader, and then you would have to burn the bootloader again.

Can we use the modules of arduino 5v with STM32 board ? Thank you

they don't put the extended jumpers to leave the low profile I suppose.

Hi, the maple is actually $4.02 US at that link...you have to select the maple from 4 options ;-)

Have you already measured the power consumption? I think the extremely low power consumption in combination with the often low power required makes the Arduino Pro mini or Nano more attractive than an STM32. Not to mention the programming effort. And have you ever tried to run into the main drivers for the sensor modules from the Arduino IDE even on STM32? Unsurprisingly, STM32 is an attractive technology, but I think it's incomparably more complicated to implement than Arduino's or ESP modules.

What are the advantages of a higher clocked microprocessor? I can't think of an application.

What is the resistor for?? would it work without the Resistor??

Keep it up

In this video, i see that you are pegging the STM32 between nano and ESP32, i would add here that some STM32 parts can go upto 480MHz, far surpassing ESP32.

Hi Ralph, Bit of a problem from a refugee from Oakley the one on the A6. STM32 Blue pill done all you say but my Tools drop down does not look at all like yours, pause for laugh..most importantly the upload method does not Show ST LInk. Yes STlink is reported as OK by the Win 10 device manager and I have installes the latest drivers from the ST website. My IDE is 1.8.6. The 7 options for upload method include 3 for STM32 and I have tried all 3. The error is always the same "Board GenF1 (platform stm32,package STM32) is unknown" Any thoughts would be much appreciated as I also have little hair left to pull out.

You are using floating point in your prime calculations. ESP32 probably has fpu hardware support while the other mcu's don't. A much more useful comparison would use integer computations, which are the mainstay of most mcu projects. Otherwise nice video.

I tried this STM32f103 and a compiled coded of 18K size for a blinking led is ridiculous, i recall the arduino has a 1.6K for same task...

I think you have to flash a bootloader to the board to use the USB port.

You had any issues with JLPCB's DHL delivery's charging you 11 quid import "fee" Ralph?

Same laptop, got the blue pill to program off the USB, then when I went back to Windows 10, I decided to try it there once more, never has worked before, but this time it dinged, well said unidentified device, but when I right clicked on it in my device manager and told it to search for a driver, it tried, then failed. I looked at the board and switched the jumper and suddenly Maple Mini appeared in my ports, on port 15. I tried to program but it balked a bit, so I uploaded the program that needed a serial port up, didn't work, but it did upload. So I hooked up the USB port and there on my serial monitor was GOOD MORNING WORLD over and over again! So I guess it sort of works some times. Still can't get the damn blink to work,, when I change the pin to PC13 it comes up with an error that PC13 was not declared in this sketch.

What is the stm32 IDE you used at 26:37?

Is this board able to operate in industrial environments?

Could you please tell me arduino has 16Mhz crystal but why atm32 bluepill has 8Mhz only.i guess it should be 72Mhz ? I want to make a pcb with STM32F030K6T6 which crystal should I use? I guess it has Internal 40 kHz RC oscillator .does it mean no need to add any crystal?