Blue Pill breakout board ?

Guys

Before I re-invent the wheel

Has anyone else done a Blue Pill breakout board?

I’m thinking of doing a PCB which is as wide as the BP is long, and accepts the BP at one end, and the ILI9341 display (including tough and SD connections).

I was also going to put connections on the back for the OV7670 camera, and as there is a lot of space under the ILI9341, I though I may as well make full use of the space and populate it connections for a load of the common sensor modules

e.g.
BME280 (or BMP280)
MEMS sensor of some kind e.g. MPU9250 or MPU6050
Possibly a Nokia 5110 monochrome LCD display

And some breakout holes

The main thing is I keep building stuff that needs a BP and a display

Has anyone done this already?

[RogerClark – Tue Jun 20, 2017 6:01 am] –
MEMS sensor of some kind e.g. MPU9250 or MPU6050

Sounds like a fun idea

And regarding the MPU’s, i believe the 6050 and 9250 are pin compatible, so you’ll support both

@racemaniac

I was thinking of pins for modules and not the actual devices, as most people have trouble soldering SM devices.

Also, I guess there are probably only a few permutations of connections to these modules.

it sounds like a ‘shield’ but yet isn’t exactly a ‘shield’, i’m thinking perhaps generic perf boards may help?

i’m using mainly (baite) maple mini, currently i’m resorting to ‘dupont’ wires connections, i’ve been looking for various similar solutions as a lot of those things i use are breakout modules.

this video give some useful tips with ‘dupont’ wires, i think the author is a member here.
https://youtu.be/eI3fxTH6f6I

one of the pretty good suggestions is to use multi pin ’empty’ shells to group several pins together. in this way it would be possible to have ‘custom cables’ that say connect an ILI9341 display to the board

the trouble i think is this may make it ‘less compact’ say as compared to having a pre-drilled perf/proto board as those components placed on the perf/proto board vs several dangling breakout modules

i’m still searching for a good generic way to connect mcu boards (e.g. BP/MM) and several breakout modules together e.g. (LCD, sensors etc) and to place them *compactly* say in a (project) box. the main problem is how to fasten them to the box in a compact manner (non super glue) as normally (project) boxes only have supports at the edges

as for the SD card i’m using a modified (removed SD series resistors) SD adapter on ILI9341 display board with the SD adapter
http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=2026

this solves the SD card problem for me and makes things more compact and monolithic so that there is less pieces of modules dangling around.
in addition, as the ILI9341 board supplies 3.3v to the SD adapter, i save 2 connecting wires that way
i’ve read somewhere that some people improvise a SD to micro-SD adapter so that they literally solder wires directly to the SD-uSD adapter and use it as a breakout module.

I already made a PCB to connect to a Maple Mini to a ILI9341, but it was for a specific project, and the board is larger than is really needed, as it also has space for an ESP-12 on it

As the Blue Pill is so popular, I thought I’d do something similar for the BP, and as the board would have a lot of free space on it, under the middle of the display, or possibly on the other side of the PCB where the display is, I may as well use this space for something, as tracks and holes cost nothing extra on a PCB

It would be probably quite useful to add a rotary encoder or potentiometer and two buttons.

[ChrisMicro – Tue Jun 20, 2017 8:33 am] –
It would be probably quite useful to add a rotary encoder or potentiometer and two buttons.

The Blue Pill is slightly longer than the BP is wide, there is probably just enough width to fit the rotary encoder, but it would need to be next to the long side of the display (as would the buttons), i.e. if you were viewing the display in landscape orientation it would be below of above the display

What is BP?
I have one hint: I made a board for an Arduino DUE and an ILI9341 Display but than a problem occurred:
The board was made for a ILI9341 2.2′ without touch which was for a certain time quite popular.
But now I can only find ILI9341 2.4′ with touch and they have a slightly different geometry so my board is not fitting any more.
My impression is: The amount of available displays seems to be limited and it is pity to design a board and later not to find the components.

There are several type of TFT boards, w/ and w/o touch, SPI or 8/16 bit parallel.
Should the breakout board support all these variants? Sounds like a mission impossible .

No, only one but one that will be available for a longer time.

I was only designing the board for one size and type of display.