A cortex M3 for makers

[electronicsfun]

Hello,
I'm looking to start using Cortex M3's on the mbed platform.  I'm looking for recommendations based on a few things:

1)  Must have mbed support.
2)  Must sell in nice form factors.

By nice form factors, I mean the microcontroller is available in a small package with a good selection of pins and maybe the power electronics for battery power usage.  I started looking at the STM32 line, because they have good mbed support and the dev boards are cheap.  But, I couldn't really find anything smaller than the dev boards if I just need a couple to make a prototype battery powered device.  I'm pretty much stuck with using the dev board unless I actually go about getting a custom PCB, and make the board.

That's not really something I want to get into.  I only need 3 or 4 for my project. 

[tszaboo]

Buy the original mbed, the board before it became a bloatware. mbed NXP LPC1768 it is called I believe.

[zapta]

Have you looked here?

https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/

For example

https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/mbed-LPC1768/

[Ultron]

Original NPX MBED is very expensive (about 70$)

I suggeste the NUCLEO-F411RE, by ST. You can get it  for less than $ 20.

Besides it has also a onboard ST-Link debugger/programmer, that can be detached and used to program other MCU.

This one is compliant with Arduino Shield form.

[ralphd]

I don't think you'll find anything cheaper than the $4 maple mini clones.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/leaflabs-Leaf-maple-mini-ARM-STM32-compatibility/32214664071.html

[zapta]

When you pick a MCU, you want at the same time to consider what tools are available for it. Some come with better and easier to setup free tools than others.

[jnz]

I have a few Nucleos, they're fairly nice. If you don't want to use the STLink as a full-on programmer, it has a mass storage option.

I'd recommend.

[Spikee]

I have used the mbed f411RE dev board before and it is great.
It also works with keil etc. Mbed OS is not that bad either.

Me and other team members had some problems installing the full stlink drivers so that the usb uart stuff also works (stock driver does not do this). After some trial and error I got it working. The good driver is somewhere on the mbed site.

[ElektroQuark]

Take a look at the Mbed "enabled" Freescale Freedom boards here:

https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/?pvend=4

Only M0 and M4 thougth.