Robot Dyn – Black Pill board may pre-install the bootloader !

What about to create an “ultimate” design of a PinkPill and offer that design files to a manufacturer for a volume production.
It seems we (people coming from other planets) are not able to manufacture such cheap boards, and, the mass manufacturers are not able to design the “ultimate” Pills.

+1

[Pito – Thu Nov 02, 2017 11:44 am] –
What about to create an “ultimate” design of a PinkPill and offer that design files to a manufacturer for a volume production.
It seems we (people coming from other planets) are not able to manufacture such cheap boards, and, the mass manufacturers are not able to design the “ultimate” Pills.

There is already a thread to create a F4 Pill board which would also accept the 64 pin F103 and other STM32 which matched the same pin arrangement.

Albeit, we are designing it with a separate analog Vcc supply ( filtered or via a second regulator), and optionally including a micro SD on the bottom of the board, like the Teensy, so its not going to be quite as cheap as these pill boards.

But perhaps people would be willing to pay a dollar or 2 more for a well designed board

More good news from Robot Dyn…

They emailed me to say that they will try to pre-install the bootloader, and probably sell it as a different SKU.

But, they didnt say whether they would change the same or more for this.

I don’t know if they pre-program their boards with a “blink” program, like some other vendors, or perhaps do no testing at all.

So if they have to add an additional process to install the bootloader and verify that the board works (especially via USB serial), they may have to charge more to cover this cost.

I wonder if it would be possible to persuade them to sell another SKU for the same price but without the central IC, so one could solder an F303xx without the trouble of desoldering the F103. Not sure how much market there would be for that, though.

[arpruss – Fri Nov 03, 2017 4:34 pm] –
I wonder if it would be possible to persuade them to sell another SKU for the same price but without the central IC, so one could solder an F303xx without the trouble of desoldering the F103. Not sure how much market there would be for that, though.

you could try emailing them, they replied to the email address listed on their website

[arpruss – Fri Nov 03, 2017 4:34 pm] –
I wonder if it would be possible to persuade them to sell another SKU for the same price but without the central IC, so one could solder an F303xx without the trouble of desoldering the F103. Not sure how much market there would be for that, though.

They might be willing to produce a batch of F303 based boards.

I am sure if you paid they, they would be willing to produce a batch, but the minimum order may be 100 or 1000 etc

that’s pretty good news and it may start a trend the ebay/aliexpress sellers start to ship 2 skus, 1 with stm32duino bootloaders pre-installed and one without, they could possibly price it for a slight premium, but it would help new entrants who do not have a st-link or usb-uart dongle

i posted some codes for a usb-uart dongle using maple mini or blue pill
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2752
i literally used it to flash another maple mini but this would depend on the bootloader working in the first place so that it is possible to install a sketch that does the usb-serial bridge

I would expect that most people who are getting started with an stm32 have already used AVR Arduinos, and so are likely to have one lying around and usable for a USB-uart bridge (by grounding the reset pin). But it would still be convenient not to have to bother with pulling out test clips, etc.

It does indeed have a 1.5k pullup resistor on the D+ line.