Nucleo board what does it have ?

[Jan Audio]

Hi, i would like to make a synthesizer.
I have this Nucleo board with STM32H7 chip.
I see there are many more small parts on this board, what is it all ?

I have a plan : solder this board to my experiment board, only the pins on the bottom are not lined up, why ?
Now the question since i dont solder SMD : with all this unused stuff on the board, does it take more energy ?, what is it all for, can i ignore it ?
I,m searching for a crystal on the board, i only see small parts, i thought crystals were big sized.

So i am ditching the DSPIC and start with STM32, i still have some PIC32MX to program, only they are complicated to start with ( PIC16 and DSPIC was easy to get started ).

Do other persons also solder this whole nucleo board into a project ?, since this board is cheaper then 1 chip.

1 more question : it seems this chip can do 64bit double floating point values in 1 instruction, does it also handle 64bit integers in 1 instruction ?

thanks

[ajb]

Hi, i would like to make a synthesizer.
I have this Nucleo board with STM32H7 chip.
I see there are many more small parts on this board, what is it all ?

Decoupling, core power supply, lots of SMD jumpers for different board configurations, components for whatever external peripherals are on the board, debugging interface, etc.  Different Nucleo boards have different complements of peripherals on the board, so you might have different LEDs, switching converter, ethernet, USB OTG, accelerometer, or other things.  It depends on which Nucleo board you have, which one is it, specifically?  (I don't know what they have for the H7 yet).

I have a plan : solder this board to my experiment board, only the pins on the bottom are not lined up, why ?

Aren't lined up with what?  The standard 100mil grid?  Because it's not really designed to be soldered into a perf board.  It's meant to sit on a bench and get plugged into other things via jumper wires.

Now the question since i dont solder SMD : with all this unused stuff on the board, does it take more energy ?, what is it all for, can i ignore it ?

Some of it will, some of it wont, again, it depends on what's on the board, which depends on which Nucleo you have. 

I,m searching for a crystal on the board, i only see small parts, i thought crystals were big sized.

Crystals can be quite small.  Not all Nucleo boards have crystals, but they all have footprints for crystals AFAIK.  Look for something labeled X1, X2, OSC1, or Y1, those are typical crystal designators.  Or look at the schematics/BOM for the board.

Do other persons also solder this whole nucleo board into a project ?, since this board is cheaper then 1 chip.

It's probably not common, personally if I wanted to use a dev board I would want to plug it into a carrier board rather than solder.  But using a dev board locks you into whatever peripherals are already there, takes up a bunch of extra space, and limits your choice of MCU, so it's not very common.  Sometimes it's done with much more complex "system-on-modules" that package complex applications processors, memory, etc into a module that's designed to be popped into a carrier board (this way the carrier board can be much cheaper in construction than that required to support the complex devices used in the SoM, and you don't have to deal with bringing up a complex architecture, you just plug it in and get Linux or whatever).

[Jan Audio]

Hi, i have the NUCLEO-H743ZI

[Jan Audio]

This is what i mean with the pins dont align :



The other side does align good, how weird.

[newbrain]

Say thanks to Arduino, for that...

[Jan Audio]

Oh well, i dont going to need all those pins.
Just one DAC on the 400HMz with double processing, optocoupler for MIDI in + LCD + EEPROM.
I will cut off those pins, thanks arduino, i hope they are not important.

[rstofer]

Have you thought about reading the datasheet for the board?  How about a glance through the schematic?  There's a ton of documentation on the STM site.  You can get to the proper spot with a Google search for your board.

[Jan Audio]

Is the Cube software not free then ?
I wont pay anything for software, do they want me to use the chips or not ?

CM7 doesn't have cyclic addressing nor bit reversal addressing, so you may have a hard time getting FIR and FFT to play well.

What is that ?,
why would they leave some instruction out ?
Is it not as fast now or totally not possible ?
I dont know what adressing is anyway, i only use C or C++.

Does PIC32MX also have this, or is PIC32MX also missing this ?,
or maybe it is something special for ARM ?

Have you thought about reading the datasheet for the board?  How about a glance through the schematic?  There's a ton of documentation on the STM site.  You can get to the proper spot with a Google search for your board.

I going to find out today, get all the info i can get + software.
I havent looked to anything yet i also bought a random board i just found out.

70 dollar is to much, i stay away from paying for software and i dont have online to activate it, i only can use free stuff.

[Jan Audio]

I thought i had the best chip in the world, need to get deeper into specs.
i could also go program PIC32MX instead, then i dont have to download anything.

[westfw]

why would they leave some instruction out ?

I think he means that those are specialized features not included in the ARM architecture (but are present in some DSPs specifically to optimize FFT processing.)
AFAIK, CM7 has an RBIT instruction for reversing bits, and USAT/SSAT instructions, so it should still be pretty good (at least theoretically. I don't know if any compiler will produce those for you without being pretty unreasonable-looking.)

[ogden]

CM7 doesn't have cyclic addressing nor bit reversal addressing, so you may have a hard time getting FIR and FFT to play well.
If you haven't get too deep into this, consider BlackFin+ (ADSP-BF706), which the eval kit is only $69, with half year of free IDE license.

No need to look for "better DSP". For single channel audio DSP realtime waveform synthesis mentioned stm32 is more than good.

[Jan Audio]

Well : i want a poly synth with reverb.

[dgtl]

The mismatch of pin spacing is due to Arduino; now everyone wants to be arduino-compatible and this mistake in grid alignment gets propagated everywhere.
Solutions:
1) Find an header with long pins and solder that to the bottom of your board. Then plug your board on top of nucleo. Long pins bend well enough to fit the sockets of nucleo:
2) Forget about the arduino headers and use the outer pins. Solder some sockets to nucleo and plug your board in. The outer ring of sockets have the same (and more) pins and they are properly aligned
3) Buy an arduino solder shield. It has the solderable area in the middle and arduino-compatible pins in the middle.

The schematics of the nucleo boards are available. Look at the schematics and see whats connected where.

[westfw]

A lot of board these days will have both Arduino-aligned (permits use of the many "shields" available) and 0.1inch grid-aligned connector (permits use with protoboards, cables, and breadboards) footprints.  Putting long pins into both of them is silly, and defeats the purpose!(the F401 Nucleo I have in front of me has female Arduino connectors inside the double-row 0.1inch grid male connectors, which is ... as it should be...)

[Jan Audio]

I always knew arduino is crap, now i have proof.

[Jan Audio]

What is the best STM32H7 chip that you suggest Blueskull ?