ARM Cortex Development Board

[pmamatsis]

Hello everyone,
   i wanted to buy one of the cheap Chinese development boards from eBay and my question is...do they contain all the necessary cables in order to program it or i need to buy also a JTAG cable? The one i am interested in buying is the following:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F103RBT6-Minimum-system-ARM-STM32-STM32F103-Development-board-Core-board-/232049623564?hash=item36073c420c:g:jIcAAOSwaB5Xsf9h

Thank you so much in advance,
Panos.

[matkar]

I don't see an integrated chip for debugging. I see a SWD connector and the 2 row black one is probably JTAG. You're better off buying any DISCO board made by ST. You get an integrated debugger plus you have the schematic and startup guide. F103 is a fairly old uC. Look for something newer like F0 series.
http://si.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?pageSize=25&st=stm32F&catalogId=15001&categoryId=700000005178&langId=386&storeId=10175

[dannyf]

What does the description say? If not, ask the seller.

[MosherIV]

I second the suggestion about ST-DISCO board.
ALL the ST Disco boards have a built in JTAG debugger.
They are almost as cheap and have an entire development and support environment by ST themselves:
https://my.st.com/public/STe2ecommunities/mcu/Lists/STM32Java/AllItems.aspx

[newbrain]

I third the others' suggestion.
Just a reminder that there are both Discovery board, usually with some peripheral on board such as MEMS, audio codec, LCD, extra memory etc. and cheaper (usually) Nucleo boards.
Nucleos do no sport anything more that the MCU and the STlink 2.1, and give access to (almost) all MCU pins.
They exist in 32, 64, and 144 version, depending on the MCU package.

[dannyf]

I would second the suggestion for nucleo boards from St. It contains stlink 2.1, which supports UART over USB, and can be flashed to jlink and back.

It also supports aduino connectors giving you access to lots of interesting boards.

[pmamatsis]

Hello everyone,
   firstly i would like to thank everyone for your valuable input! I haven't thought that the cheap eBay clones would be so tiresome in order to use! I will do a better research on the brands you have suggested but definitely eBay is an off!!! Can i use opencm to program the boards you are suggesting?

Best regards,
Panos.
 

[MT]

EMBITS-EMBLOCKS.

[dannyf]

"haven't thought that the cheap eBay clones would be so tiresome in order to use"

It is anything but tiresome to use. You can program it through its bootloader - all you need is a UART connection.

Or you can program it via a stlink plus a few wires: from less than 5usd for a clone to 20usd for the real thing.

If you go with the 103c board, you can find them for less than 5usd, typically around 3usd each.

[vidi]

Could you please tell us what performance / usage / peripherals do you need ?

You might take a look for freedom boards. They are not the cheapest to buy but they come with onboard debugger - K20 - that acts as USB composite device (debugger + virtual com). Some of them use OpenSDA firmware (the word  'open' is misleading), some CMSIS Dap and if you want you can update the firmware to Jlink. https://www.segger.com/downloads/jlink

The basic K25, CortexM0+ cost about 14e. I think it's a good starting point but some of the peripherals …. I just don't like them. And the debugger is locked to specific chip id that is present on the board.

http://gr.mouser.com/ProductDetail/NXP-Freescale/FRDM-KL25Z/?qs=wI1qWm3nqpC0oYrjHig4og%3D%3D

[janoc]

Hello everyone,
   firstly i would like to thank everyone for your valuable input! I haven't thought that the cheap eBay clones would be so tiresome in order to use! I will do a better research on the brands you have suggested but definitely eBay is an off!!! Can i use opencm to program the boards you are suggesting?

Best regards,
Panos.

It is not tiresome, but that is a classic devboard - micro, voltage regulator, crystal and pins broken out to headers, perhaps a LED and a button, nothing else. The USB connector is for the USB interface on the micro (STM32F103 supports USB).

These cheap boards don't come with built-in debugger/programmer. If you want to use it, buy a cheap ST-Link clone from eBay or any other SWD/JTAG dongle, they will pretty much all work with it. If you will want to actually build something with the STM32 micros, you will need it anyway.

If you don't want to bother with that, get one of the Discovery or Nucleo boards from ST which have the ST-Link SWD "dongle" included on-board and require only an USB connection. The small "nano" Nucleos are great for use on a breadboard, the larger Discos and Nucleos with double row headers are a bit of a pain form factor to use. That on-board SWD programmer can be used in a pinch for programming external targets too, but you will quickly find that tiresome (requires soldering some jumpers).

The alternative is to use the built-in bootloader, but most of these micros don't have an USB bootloader, only a serial one, so you would need an USB to serial cable (which is a good thing to have anyway). And that still wouldn't let you debug, which is something you will probably want.

[pmamatsis]

Could you please tell us what performance / usage / peripherals do you need ?

You might take a look for freedom boards. They are not the cheapest to buy but they come with onboard debugger - K20 - that acts as USB composite device (debugger + virtual com). Some of them use OpenSDA firmware (the word  'open' is misleading), some CMSIS Dap and if you want you can update the firmware to Jlink. https://www.segger.com/downloads/jlink

The basic K25, CortexM0+ cost about 14e. I think it's a good starting point but some of the peripherals …. I just don't like them. And the debugger is locked to specific chip id that is present on the board.

http://gr.mouser.com/ProductDetail/NXP-Freescale/FRDM-KL25Z/?qs=wI1qWm3nqpC0oYrjHig4og%3D%3D

Hello @vidi,
   my project's goal is to make a small drone...honestly speaking i am just researching for the spare parts because i haven't built in the past such a big scale project.

Best regards,
Panos.

[janoc]

Hello @vidi,
   my project's goal is to make a small drone...honestly speaking i am just researching for the spare parts because i haven't built in the past such a big scale project.

Best regards,
Panos.

In such case, why don't you simply use a proven and working board? You can get a list of what is available here, for example:

http://www.emcu.it/Drones/Drones.html

There is also ArduPilot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardupilot

Getting the IMU and motor control right from scratch for someone with no experience with it is going to be quite challenging. If learning how to do that is not your goal and you want to "only" build a drone and fly it, I would strongly recommend going with a known good controller which does everything you need already.  It will save you an enormous amount of time, money and crashes.

Furthermore, the specialized controller boards are completely integrated, including connections to the motor drivers ("ESC"s), onboard sensors (gyro, accelerometer, some have GPS too), voltage regulators, radios, etc. If you go with a generic devboard like the one you have linked (or the ST's Nucleo/Discovery), you would have to add all of that - significantly increasing size and weight, which is obviously an issue if you want to build a small drone with only limited available lift.