Microsoft MakeCode

Maker support for STM32 Bluepill 64kb?

#1

In recent time I have only been able to get hold of medium density STM32F103 boards (bluepills). Which means they come with either 64kb (C8) or 128kb (CB). But, all of them have been 64kb … and according to https://github.com/microsoft/pxt-maker/tree/master/libs/bluepill#support-for-blue-pill-boards ONLY 128kb is supported. However, I have no use for these boards for jacda, math and the asserts. How would I go about adding this as a target?

I found that the base was modified in https://github.com/microsoft/pxt-common-packages/pull/706/files to become leaner and providing the STM32F1 support, but can this be made modular as not all targets would require jacdac or advanced maths

#2

Depends what you want to do, but most of these boards have 128k and the ones marked as 64k are just untested beyond 64k. So if you are doing something that isn’t critical then it may just work.

#3

UF2 firmware was flashed, but after uploading the .hex of a simple blink using the LED (PC13) nothing seems to happen.

forever(function () {
    pins.LED.digitalWrite(false)
    pause(1000)
    pins.LED.digitalWrite(true)
    pause(1000)
})

The boards led blink/fades to show the bootloader passed, and then stays dark.

#4

How to make sure of this?

#5

Does it work on your 128k boards?

#6

Well, that is the whole point. Flashing the firmware and uploading the program is not the issue… but when I use the code as described above it should blink the LED on PC13, right? I does not… is that conclusive? not sure how to get more information, like debugging… I have an ST-Link V2 if necessary (no CMSIS-DAP at the moment).

1 Like
#7

Well I didn’t test 128k version recently, so it could be broken completely. Maker is not very stable, especially for less used boards.

There are some docs on hardware debugging here https://github.com/microsoft/pxt/blob/master/docs/develop/hw-debugging.md

#8

I have checked, and in ST-Link utility all boards I have are identified as:

18:21:18 : Device ID:0x410 
18:21:18 : Device flash Size : 64KBytes
18:21:18 : Device family :STM32F10xx Medium-density

they were sourced from about 5 different places over time