But the documentation for how to do this did not seem to be written by the IDE team in their “Third party” page on github 
It would be good to use this, as I presume it could call stm32flash to do the upload.
As as as I can see, at the moment, the only way to determine who to author the files to do this, is to attempt to reverse engineer the platform.txt and programmers.txt file for AVR or SAM
Another interesting point, is that Ivan who does the code for the esp8266 has written a java based plugin for the esp8266 to upload data files ( filesystem images) to the esp8266.
We could modify that file, and get it to burn the bootloader instead.
However, its more files the user would need to install, as the plugins go in a different folder (My Documents\Arduino\tools) rather than in the hardware folder.
If we did a JSON file installation, this would be ok, as it could install the plugin at the same time, but overall its better if we can just use the existing Burn Bootloader functionality without needing a plugin.
This way, you just select the “STM32Bootloader” board. Define your pins. And hit upload, and it would compile and upload via serial. It may not be the cleanest method, but it would make it so you can customize the bootloader for whatever board you want easily. Just a thought. I am going to see if I can get the “burn bootloader” function working first.
Rather than all this angst.
Rather than all this angst.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/bin/avrdude -CC:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/etc/avrdude.conf -v -patmega328p -cstk500v2 -Pusb -e -Ulock:w:0x3F:m -Uefuse:w:0x05:m -Uhfuse:w:0xDE:m -Ulfuse:w:0xFF:m
Rather than all this angst.
As far as I know.. No one sells a Maple mini type board that uses a F4, at least not at a economic price.
I’m sure if there was a sub $10 (preferrably $5) F407 based Maple mini, loads of people would use it, and there would be some impetus to upgrade the F4 core
But its a chicken and egg situation at the moment. Designing and manufacturing a F4 based Maple mini, in large enough quantities (in China) would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the return on investment would be slow and low, with the high risk of someone else copying your hardware design and undercutting your price and putting you out of business.
I’d love to everyone to design a F4 board and get it mass produced, but as far as I can tell there isnt a viable business model for this.
BTW. If anyone knows of a reliable Chinese manufacturer who will do small runs e.g. 100 off, pick and place and reflow soldering, I think it would be interesting to a lot of people
As far as I know.. No one sells a Maple mini type board that uses a F4, at least not at a economic price.
I’m sure if there was a sub $10 (preferrably $5) F407 based Maple mini, loads of people would use it, and there would be some impetus to upgrade the F4 core
But its a chicken and egg situation at the moment. Designing and manufacturing a F4 based Maple mini, in large enough quantities (in China) would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the return on investment would be slow and low, with the high risk of someone else copying your hardware design and undercutting your price and putting you out of business.
I’d love to everyone to design a F4 board and get it mass produced, but as far as I can tell there isnt a viable business model for this.
BTW. If anyone knows of a reliable Chinese manufacturer who will do small runs e.g. 100 off, pick and place and reflow soldering, I think it would be interesting to a lot of people
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I just don’t care for most of the China-crap. Undocumented or pigeon-English, buggy, kludgy. Some is good, but not dirt cheap.
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To me, trying to adapt Arduino and it’s libraries and tool chain use to a nice STM32F3 or F4 is much like trying to run a foot race with flip-flops for running shoes.
The STM32F1xx is, IMO, just too crude for hobby use where you want to enjoy, have fun, learn, not struggle on a tangent to your goals.
For me, it’s more fun to spend $15-30 for a decent board, and not fight for hours on end with no bootloader, no documentation, crappy build quality, etc. Then I can spend my time on my goal and learning,..
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I just don’t care for most of the China-crap. Undocumented or pigeon-English, buggy, kludgy. Some is good, but not dirt cheap.
<…>
To me, trying to adapt Arduino and it’s libraries and tool chain use to a nice STM32F3 or F4 is much like trying to run a foot race with flip-flops for running shoes.
The STM32F1xx is, IMO, just too crude for hobby use where you want to enjoy, have fun, learn, not struggle on a tangent to your goals.
For me, it’s more fun to spend $15-30 for a decent board, and not fight for hours on end with no bootloader, no documentation, crappy build quality, etc. Then I can spend my time on my goal and learning,..
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Yeah, I’m biased. I just watch from afar all these newcomers struggling with Arduino’s bastardized version of C/C++ and related use of tools.
Then spend oh so much frustration with the ST32F1xx with no built-in bootloader from ST. It’s an AVR mindset.
It can be so much easier.
Much of this is fast becoming moot… with low cost microprocessor boards running Javascript, Python and Lua interpreters that reduce your lines of code count hugely.
whilst some of us appreciate a high quality tool set and support processes from their work experience, at home a convoluted journey can be its own pleasure.
for those starting into Arduino it is supposedly an easy introduction to programming, actually it is difficult in concepts. by the time they learn enough to play easily with it, they’ll probably be seeing limitations, looking to go faster or learn about the process, i’ll take bets they in hind sight enjoyed the journey and feel they’ve achieved quite a lot.
i don’t really care whether something ends up in a box with nice printing, the fact is i get through the problems to get to that state and was quite probably annoyed, baffled, surprised, plain wrong and a few other states in the process.
that i raised questions, provoked discussion, got help and answers from this forum is another satisfaction from the process.
maybe someone else learnt something they’d missed or not understood or that even asking to go over something again can lead to finding things missed.
the only stupid question is one not asked, phrasing it properly is a different problem..
stm32duino is a way to learn more, in a known and familiar context. it has a few more quirks, concepts and i suppose some extras, architecture and when you start seeing limits, you begin looking how best to proceed, asking questions, reading documentation and trying to understand hal, cubemx or the st libs, cmsis and their structure(s) etc, etc
that’s the same process that brought you to the stm32 platform.
we look at the capabilities of the chips, what do we gain with f2, f3, f4 or f7, can we run code on them, what do we need to do to run code.
so far in addition to those, i’ve also delved into / investigated github, gdb, bmp, esp8266-arduino, eclipse, eclipse extensions, openocd.
the first lecture at uni was defining what an engineer is, amongst them was one about one bob and two bob,
stm32f1 is a more advanced platform than arduino, more capabilities and is a lot cheaper than the real arduinos and its a learning tool for us.
stephen
