Pieter from Piconomix, Cape Town, South Africa has recently launched it STM32 based PX-HER0 Development Board. It is an educational tool with an intention to help educators, students as well developers with lots of freely available resources.
Extensive Documentation
Lots of documentation to help learn as easily as possible:
- PX-HER0 Board Manual
- PX-HER0 Board Getting Started Guide
- PX-HER0 Bootloader Page
- PX-HER0 Board-specific Examples
- STM32CubeIDE Getting Started Guide
- PX-HER0 Arduino Support
- ARM and STM32 Getting Started Guide
- STM32 Tutorials
- CLI Explorer App
CLI Explorer App
The board comes with CLI Explorer App (Command Line Interpreter) that creates a “Un*x Shell”-like environment running on the PX-HER0 board so that you can easily experiment with GPIO, PWM, ADC, DAC, I²C, SPI, and 1-Wire using only ANSI/VT100 terminal software.
So, when you get your board, you need not write any software to explore these functions. CLI is a great feature, it could be a great tool for debugging as well. I have seem a very few engineers using CLI in their MCU based designs, on the other hands it is in-built on embedded Linux based systems.
Everything is Open Source 🙂
The C library is MIT licensed and available on GitHub.
- Schematic
- Board Layout
- Bill Of Materials – Deluxe Edition
- Assembly Drawings – part designators & silkscreen
- Mechanical Dimensions
- 3D Model
Arduino IDE Support
Native Arduino support is available with examples, one more big plus if you are already working with Arduino platform.
Features & Specifications
- Microcontroller: STM32L072RB ultra low-power ARM Cortex-M0+
- 128k FLASH
- 20k SRAM
- 6k EEPROM
- Memory: Adesto AT25SF041 4 Mbit serial flash memory
- Storage: Spring-loaded push-push microSD card slot
- Serial communication: Rock-solid FTDI FT230XS USB-serial bridge
- Rich user interface:
- Low-power 128 x 64 monochrome graphic LCD with LED back-light
- User LED and battery charger LED
- Piezo buzzer
- 6 LARGE finger-friendly user buttons
- Reset button
- Peripheral connectors:
- PWR (+3.6 V to +5 V power bus)
- 4x ADC, 1x DAC
- 8x GPIO / 4x PWM
- 2x UART
- 3x I²C (one I²C bus)
- 1 x Sparkfun Qwiic / STEMMA QT I²C connector
- 1 x Seeed Grove I²C connector
- 1 via 0.1″ header
- 1x SPI
- Power:
- Li-Po battery charger
- Zero-burden voltage monitoring circuit
- Efficient power-path management, true power on/off circuit
- 95% efficient TI LM3670 step-down DC-DC regulator
- Dimensions:
- Board: 100 x 80 mm (3.94 x 3.15″)
- Display active pixel area: 48.6 x 24.9 mm (1.91 x 0.98″) / 54.6 mm (2.15″) diagonal
STLINK-V3 MINI Debugger
To keep the cost low they decided to keep debugger outside the board and provides easy to connect STLink V3 Mini debugger.
Low Power Design
The development board designed keeping in mind the low power comsption and its suitability in battery powered projects or products.
They have carefully selected each components like Large Glass Display, step-down DC-DC power supply chip, SPI Flash, USB to UART FTDI Chip, Low RDS ON P-Channel Mosfet, etc.
Cost & How to Buy?
PX-Her0 STM32 Development Board is currently available on crowd-supply and you can buy one for 42$ and if you are interested in bundling it with STLINK V3 Mini, it will be for 56$.
I hope you have enjoyed this article and are as excited as I am to get my hands dirty with this development board to explore what is possible.
You can read my other blogs or interesting embedded system articles here where I share some of the practical tips for embedded system design.
I help embedded engineers and start ups build reliable and successful embedded products and providing professional services as embedded system design consultant. If you need any help please let me know here.
Happy Learning to you!