Cheap Bluepill, very likely it has fake STM32 right ?

[dreamcat4]

Well I didn't want to chime in earlier. Because you guys were having such a very interesting discussion about Chinese manufacturing practices! But since you have now covered that. I guess it might be OK to maybe redirect this conversation a wee bit. Here is my viewpoint:

Well even if you get a genuine STM32F103, it still has about 42 pages of errata. Quite a few hardware bugs. Mostly conflicts around the IO peripherals. And similar stuff like that. This can be frustrating to lookup in the docs and 'be aware of' while developing firmware. Which is of course that is purely for the official ST versions. In addition and extra to any of the other unexpected bugs for being one of the clones / faked ones.

So even if genuine, i would instead 'generally recommend' the black pill (=stm32f4) these days. Over the older, more buggy f103.

Apparently ST redid the IO blocks in the f4. And made that part a lot better. Although I have not looked into the details myself. Surely it would then have a much shorter errata document? It would make sense to check / compare that.

Ah but you say: well the F103 is cheaper! The F4 costs more. But it seems there is a cheaper version of the official f4 from places like digikey and the other reputable suppliers. For about $2.50 a pop. So those 'low end' F4 part (usually 48 pin). Are probably supposed to deprecate and replace the older f103. And be like a substitute part. Especially if it's saying 'f103 is no longer manufactured anymore'. And they seem to cost tons more now anyway. The official F103s.

What else?

Very interested in hearing if these newer F4 chip on '$3 Chinese black pill' are also counterfeit chips. Or re-lasered rejects / whatever. Nice to find out more about these possible f4 variations, if anybody else has a similar interest and knows more? Would love to hear about that. Many thanks.

 

[techman-001]

Well I didn't want to chime in earlier. Because you guys were having such a very interesting discussion about Chinese manufacturing practices! But since you have now covered that. I guess it might be OK to maybe redirect this conversation a wee bit. Here is my viewpoint:

Well even if you get a genuine STM32F103, it still has about 42 pages of errata. Quite a few hardware bugs. Mostly conflicts around the IO peripherals. And similar stuff like that. This can be frustrating to lookup in the docs and 'be aware of' while developing firmware. Which is of course that is purely for the official ST versions. In addition and extra to any of the other unexpected bugs for being one of the clones / faked ones.

So even if genuine, i would instead 'generally recommend' the black pill (=stm32f4) these days. Over the older, more buggy f103.

Apparently ST redid the IO blocks in the f4. And made that part a lot better. Although I have not looked into the details myself. Surely it would then have a much shorter errata document? It would make sense to check / compare that.

Ah but you say: well the F103 is cheaper! The F4 costs more. But it seems there is a cheaper version of the official f4 from places like digikey and the other reputable suppliers. For about $2.50 a pop. So those 'low end' F4 part (usually 48 pin). Are probably supposed to deprecate and replace the older f103. And be like a substitute part. Especially if it's saying 'f103 is no longer manufactured anymore'. And they seem to cost tons more now anyway. The official F103s.

What else?

Very interested in hearing if these newer F4 chip on '$3 Chinese black pill' are also counterfeit chips. Or re-lasered rejects / whatever. Nice to find out more about these possible f4 variations, if anybody else has a similar interest and knows more? Would love to hear about that. Many thanks.

 

I agree with you, the STM32F1xx was released in 2004, it was STMicro's first ever Cortex-M chip and I've been ranting that it shouldn't be used in new projects for years given the availability of much more recent mcu's. At 16 years of age it's been time to move on from the STM32F103 for quite a while.

But there are still a couple of very good reasons for buying a cheap Bluepill board, (which don't seem to be as cheap as they once were anymore) :
* Make a Black Magic Probe 
https://mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc.sourceforge.io/bluepill-bmp.html
* Make a SWD/USB programmer
https://mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc.sourceforge.io/bluepill-stlink-programmer.html#bluepill-stlink-v2-programmer-debugger

Personally I use the STM32F051 for most things and I'm playing around with some STM32F746's at the moment. A STM32H7xx will get you a clock speed of nearly 500 MHz and so on.

I think those frontier days of the "bluepill" gold rush are over now and the gold has all petered out.

Talking about the STM32F1xx I/O blocks, the  GPIO configuration is unique among the STM32 MCU range. They changed it for everything else and me, who learnt the STM32F051 (Cortex-M0) first, seeing the F103 GPIO doc for the first time was a real WTF! moment.

The STM32F1xx Port Configuration Register documentation is very confusing which has caused a lot of people to write code to try and make it manageable. In a way it's a bit of a cruel joke.

I realized recently that the STM32F1xx Port Configuration Register could be simplified by rewriting the MODE and CONF Bitfields  into one Bitfield named “MODER”.
When this is done a simplified truth table becomes obvious giving seven simple GPIO config options:-

Code: [Select]

MODER-x Function
0000 input, analog
0001 output, push-pull, 10 mhz
0100 input, floating
0101 output, open-drain, 10 mhz
1000 pulldown ODR = 0 pullup ODR = 1
1001 output, alt func, push-pull, 10 mhz
1101 output, alt func, open-drain, 10 mhz
For the full story (warning: some small amounts of Forth code) see.
https://mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc.sourceforge.io/bluepill/bluepill-gpio/doc/readme.html

[Topazio]

The ST-Link utility can query the chip. Check what it says.

The cheap Blue Pills used to be genuine until someone started remarking STM32s that have half the RAM/flash, and whatever other substitutions they might be performing these days. There's probably overlap in the prices between real and fake.

Yes the most are clones, and they do work for the most, I don't know why the clones they don't work with the HID bootloader..

If you are lucky you will have a legit clone marked CKS32F103C8T6  or CKS32F103CBT6 these microcontroller  are from a Chinese company that payed the royalties to make the clone according to SMT projects...
They work 100% I used these in many projects especially when the semiconductor market went to crisis due to Covid

You may read this about clones

https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

 

[grantb5]

Interesting about the CKS parts. I think the parts shortage is still going on quite strongly. Where did you source the CKS parts? I would like to give one a shot.

[mon2]

We chased the CKS brand for a while through Alibaba. Many advertise the part but then want $6-$8 USD for the part that sells for $0.80 USD in Shenzhen. Do not blame the middle agent from making a profit but 10x ?? They can keep it. The vendors who probably meet to lock the market together said 'go to ST and check their pricing'.

I think a trick is to seek out a local in the Shenzhen / China market and hire them to negotiate a 'Chinese' price.

Locally in North America, Gigadevices / Geehy are claiming the CKS are illegal and blatant copies of the ST IP so not sure on the legality of using in a product. We attempted to buy some boards to test but magically, they were not shipped out and Aliexpress gave us a refund. Perhaps just bad covid-19 luck.

In the meantime we are wasting our limited braincells to use these alternate devices. While we do plan to use Gigadevices memory devices - brain dead simple to deploy, do not feel the same about the micros. We wanted a drag & drop DAP interface and thought it would be a few hours of fun to port over but so far, has not been the case. The vendor has a tool that is similar and supports the same features - for which no source code is available; even the binaries are not available to the public. What ?? No factory support as we see it. Do not want to invest months to use a sub-mainstream microcontroller and also at a fairly high cost as compared to ST. ST is just guilty of being too popular.

If we are going to fight to use and code our own IP, we will spend our $$ on the devices we select and from who offers the support. Blind leading the blind will not take us very far.

[Algoma]

I've long since replaced all my Bluepill inventory with far better documented and supported RP2040 Pico units. Plenty of availability and support, and there appears to even exist pin comptable boards to the old Bluepill layout.

[GromBeestje]

Locally in North America, Gigadevices / Geehy are claiming the CKS are illegal and blatant copies of the ST IP so not sure on the legality of using in a product.

I did some testing on the clones again the other day. I am looking at ways to tell them apart. In order to do so, I decided to look at the "System ROM", containing the UART bootloader. My APM103  chips are from the days they were still ApexMic, but it turned out both my APM32 and CS32 contain an unmodified copy of the bootrom as found on an STM32F103CBT6. On other manufactures I have found other bootroms, GD32, HK32, and CH32 have different content in there.

Current day Geehy APM32 might be different from ApexMic, but I doubt it. Both CS32 and APM32 contain ST's IP in the form of that bootloader. I have some Geehy parts ordered, but it might take some time to arrive, as the tracking information says it's stuck at customs.

[robca]

For a hobbyist, the widely available STM32F401 and STM32F411-based "Black Pill" are a much better choice https://stm32-base.org/boards/STM32F411CEU6-WeAct-Black-Pill-V2.0.html

Those cost around $3 each (plus shipping), are much more capable than a F103, use USB C connectors and, as far as I can tell, use genuine ST chips. Complete toolchain support even in Arduino. Only downside, apart from having to adapt any exiting code, is that those can't be easily made into an STLink like the Bluepill could. But there are plenty of STLink clones available, and the much better STLink 3.0 MODS from ST is less than $10 and a significant upgrade over the usual STLink clones

[GromBeestje]

Yeah, we live in strange times, where an F4 Black Pill became cheaper then an F1 Blue Pill.  Those Black Pills are nice indeed.
But it's not only the code you need to adopt, the Blue Pill and Black Pill pinout also differ.
When you have the USB port on the left, the top row of pins differ. Most important, the top left is GND on the Blue Pill and 5V on the Black Pill,