Beginner Recommendations for PIC32 and STM32

[electricMouse64]

Hello Guys,

I am fairly new to embedded systems, but I have played around with Arduino , Attiny, and MSP430 for some small projects. What is a good starter for PIC32 and STM32?

thanks!

[daybyter]

http://www.stm32duino.com

and stm32f103c8t6 ?

[EBRAddict]

Do you want a faster board or learn to program microcontrollers in C?

If you want to play around with STM32 get a $11 Nucleo-F091 board and download Keil uVision MDK and get the free 256KB license code for STM32F0/STM32L0 boards. I've found it to be solid and comprehensive and the debugger IDE works on a VM. YMMV.

PIC32? I tried, I really tried.

Don't pass up the Cypress PSoC chips, there's a very good $10 dev board CYC8KIT-059 with the PSoC 5LP. For fast setup and easy mid-stream changes I really like their configurator tool. Best of class documentation and examples, both printed and video.

Within the Arduino framework try the Teensy 3.5/3.6 with VisualMicro IDE. A real IDE with a Cortex-M4F with the benefits of the Arduino libraries.

[Sal Ammoniac]

For the PIC32 I'd recommend one of the Digilent chipKIT boards or one of the Mikroelektronika boards.

http://store.digilentinc.com/processors/processor-boards/

http://www.mikroe.com/easypic-fusion/

[boz]

PIC32s in 28 pin DIP form are under $1.60 each in 1-off qtys, buy a pickit3 clone off ebay for about $15 (will be useful for other PIC programming if you decide its good for you), drop it onto a breadboard and throw a few LEDs on it and download MPLABX then try and get the LEDs to blink. STM32 have development boards for $10 that is seriously the best option for those

[ale500]

I sencond the following:

The PIC32MX1xx in DIP28 are as easy to work with as ATMegas.
With the STM parts you need a breakout board, there are cheap ones at *bay and alixpress.
Cypress offer on the PSoC breakout stick is something to consider, but be aware that the PINs work at 5 V ! when powered via USB !!. (A Cortex-M3 with 5 V PINS !, that is something you don't get any day...).

[electricMouse64]

For the PIC32 I'd recommend one of the Digilent chipKIT boards or one of the Mikroelektronika boards.

http://store.digilentinc.com/processors/processor-boards/

http://www.mikroe.com/easypic-fusion/

I'll take a look at digilent's line; since, I am buying the Arty Board Artix-7 FPGA Development  for Verilog.  This seems alright for just learning : http://store.digilentinc.com/chipkit-uc32-basic-microcontroller-board-with-uno-r3-headers/

[stfsux]

PIC32? I tried, I really tried.

+100, MIPS CPU and a huge memory map. Painful.

[danadak]

How about ARM32 with lots of analog, DSP, DMA......

PSOC 5LP. Even low end is 32 bit, PSOC 4.


For me what stands out is -

1) Routability
2) Fast 12 bit SAR A/D and slow 20 bit DelSig
3) DFB (Digital Filter Block) that is dual channel, handle FIR or IIR filters, or DFB
can be used as a GP fast processor block, similar to RISC block
4) MSI logic elements GUI based and/or the UDB Verilog capability. Eg. the FPGA
like capability
5) Onboard Vref
6) IDAC, VDAC, OpAmps (up to 4), comparator, mixer, switch cap, analog mux....
7) LCD,  COM, UART, I2C, I2S, One Wire, SPI, Parallel, LIN, CAN, BLE, USB
9) Custom components capability, create with schematic capture or Verilog
10) DMA to offload processes like filters, COM, Display
11) ARM M0 (PSOC 4) or M3 (PSOC  5LP) or 8051 core(PSOC 3)
12) Extensive clock generation capabilities
13) All components supported by extensive prewritten APIs

https://www.element14.com/community/thread/23736/l/100-projects-in-100-days?displayFullThread=true

http://www.cypress.com/documentation/code-examples/psoc-345-code-examples

Great video library

Attached component list.  A component is an on chip HW resource.

Free GUI design tool with schematic capture, "Creator". Components have rich API library attached
to each component. Compilers free as well.

PSOC 4 is low end of family, consider 5LP parts as well. PSOC 4 also has arduino footprint boards (pioneer) as well

https://www.elektormagazine.com/labs/robot-build-with-cypress-psoc

http://www.cypress.com/products/32-bit-arm-cortex-m-psoc



Regards, Dana.

[Sal Ammoniac]

PIC32? I tried, I really tried.

+100, MIPS CPU and a huge memory map. Painful.

If you program it in C, what difference does it make if the core is ARM or MIPS?

What do you mean by "huge memory map"?

[stfsux]

If you program it in C, what difference does it make if the core is ARM or MIPS?

You always have to read asm code for debugging purpose, not often ok but sometimes it happens.
About the memory map, i was pretty surprised about the separation of address space (user/kernel mode) and
I doubt it could be useful for many application. They even added some hardware virtualization. For a MCU, srsly. srsly?
I'm still thinking that PIC32 is not a good start, too much advanced stuff, too easy to get lost.

[EBRAddict]

Cypress offer on the PSoC breakout stick is something to consider, but be aware that the PINs work at 5 V ! when powered via USB !!. (A Cortex-M3 with 5 V PINS !, that is something you don't get any day...).

I believe you can set the I/O pin voltage via the System configuration tab in PSoC Creator, VDDIO. You can set VDDIO to 1.8V or 3.3V up to VDDA.

[rexnanet]

stm32f103c8t6 in "BluePill" board is as cheap as $h"#. ST-Link V2 programmer is also at the same price ~2€/$.

Theeeeen you can use it with Arduino IDE and pretty much all the arduino libraries which makes it very easy to use and very powerful at the same time!

Check out www.stm32duino.com ! Lots of info and projects there!

[leavesw]

STM32 based boards for sure - you can find a lot of cheap boards there -

PIC32 is never a good sales for Microchip and they just purchased ATMEL. So...

[dgtl]

For STM32: If you are aiming for the lowest budget, there are plenty of STM32F103 boards on aliexpress etc for ~2$. Add a debugger (st-link) for about same price and you have all you need. Alternatively, if you can afford, get one of the STM32 official evaluation boards (plenty of them with very different prices), that comes with a detachable st-link. In that case, rather start with a larger mcu ie F4xx and you can scale down at any time later.
As ST did not have their IDE offering until recently, there are a lot of competiting solutions from free to quite expensive. Now there is SW4ST32, that is the official thing. In the software side there are no very right or wrong selections, just go with one or try out some and choose what you like the most. People usually recommend what they like the most and you have to choose your own. Either try stm32duino if you really want to continue on arduino line or get one of the more professional ones.
I would also suggest trying out Cypress PSoC. Very nicely polished solution with their IDE, works out of the box and not much hassle. Only official boards so far, but they are cheap (~10$). Alternatively, there are ARM microcontrollers from NXP LC (with their lpcxpresso IDE) and Atmel SAM (Atmel Studio). There are plenty of fans for all of them.
I have no exprerience with PIC32.

[technix]

If you program it in C, what difference does it make if the core is ARM or MIPS?

You always have to read asm code for debugging purpose, not often ok but sometimes it happens.
About the memory map, i was pretty surprised about the separation of address space (user/kernel mode) and
I doubt it could be useful for many application. They even added some hardware virtualization. For a MCU, srsly. srsly?
I'm still thinking that PIC32 is not a good start, too much advanced stuff, too easy to get lost.

PIC32MZ line now comes with a MMU, and have enough address lines to support 64MB of parallel memory (PSRAM or NOR Flash) and 64MB of QSPI Flash. The built-in flash have enough space to hold the bootloader, and the 64MB QSPI have enough space for a Linux 4.10 kernel and a 56MB root filesystem through mtd and yaffs. The 64MB parallel memory interface is pretty much dedicated to PSRAM here if you want to run Linux 4.10 smoothly.

It have USB OTG and Ethernet, and you can add in an LCD interface at the cost of some memory space (but not half of it.) You still have a few high-speed UART, SPI and I2C buses open for a Bluetooth module, microSD card, a touchscreen and some other stuff. Keyboards and mice can go straight to the Bluetooth wireless interface.

[Sal Ammoniac]

PIC32 is never a good sales for Microchip and they just purchased ATMEL. So...

Microchip tends to support their PIC products for a long time, typically far longer than most vendors do. Even though they're now in the ARM market by default (via the Atmel acquisition), I don't think they'll discontinue the PIC32 line.

I would put the difficulty of leaning PIC32 on par with learning ARM Cortex-M. Microchip documentation tends to be very good, which isn't something I can say for a lot of the Cortex-M vendors.

[leavesw]

Microchip tends to support their PIC products for a long time, typically far longer than most vendors do. Even though they're now in the ARM market by default (via the Atmel acquisition), I don't think they'll discontinue the PIC32 line.

I would put the difficulty of leaning PIC32 on par with learning ARM Cortex-M. Microchip documentation tends to be very good, which isn't something I can say for a lot of the Cortex-M vendors.

I do not think Microchip will cancel PIC32 line - but as I have worked on PIC32 for quite some years, I have encountered with a few bugs in their silicon, especially their DMA core. You also need to hack the Chipkit GCC compiler into MPLAB-X to get free area optimization option.
My recent projects are on STM32 series - I have not extensively used STM32 chips yet - but coming from feedbacks from STM32Duino community, they seem to be pretty solid chips.
And the compiler for ARM is solid and free. So - to build up a skill set in microcontrollers, I will probably recommend STM32 lines.

[racemaniac]

stm32f103c8t6 in "BluePill" board is as cheap as $h"#. ST-Link V2 programmer is also at the same price ~2€/$.

Theeeeen you can use it with Arduino IDE and pretty much all the arduino libraries which makes it very easy to use and very powerful at the same time!

Check out www.stm32duino.com ! Lots of info and projects there!

it's what got me into more serious mcu programming, so i'm going to  confirm this
also, for 5$ in total you have an st link clone and a bluepill board, where else can you start so cheap XD

[hamdi.tn]

Definitely STM32, Discovery boards are cheap and free tools to develop are available with large support on forums and such.