Seeed Arch Max

I got it in the mail today.

IMG_20160607_201140.jpg (131.98 KiB) Viewed 1956 times

… And the ethernet link is steady! I think there’s a bug in auto-negotiation, I think it’s using half duplex when it should be full.

But I can ping it:

27 packets transmitted, 27 received, 0% packet loss, time 26000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.129/0.164/0.441/0.060 ms

Hi Dan,

Which variant did you choose, the DiscoF407 ? I didn’t look details yet, do we have already the ETH library for it ?
I should receive my Arch Max board soon, hoping this week !

martinayotte wrote:Hi Dan,

Which variant did you choose, the DiscoF407 ? I didn’t look details yet, do we have already the ETH library for it ?
I should receive my Arch Max board soon, hoping this week !

Yesterday I purchased the same board. It’s very interesting board for only $19.90 USD .

ddrown wrote:
For stm32duino, I tried the f4 discovery, which gave me a really slow blink (should be 1/s, was roughly 1/15s)

Vassilis wrote:Yesterday I purchased the same board. It’s very interesting board for only $19.90 USD .

http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/pro … 407ve.html

Reads..

ARM Cortex-M4 core with DSP and FPU, 512 Kbytes Flash, 168 MHz CPU

@stevech, I think you’ve missed that this board is an F407, a M4 not a M0.
The only bad point is that it is sad that they took the 512K Flash variant instead of the 1MB.
For that price, it is unbeatable.
When I will receive it, I hope to figure out all issues and probably purchase some more …

BTW, for those who wish to get bare chips, the STM32F407VGT, the 1MB version, can be found on AliExpress as low as $6 in single unit free shipping.

I will order one today, as it does seem an unbeatable deal.

Its strange that both iTead and Seeed are both, heavily discounting their STM boards.

Perhaps they have a special deal with STM

… or new STM32F7xx boards will start appearing …

martinayotte wrote:@stevech, I think you’ve missed that this board is an F407, a M4 not a M0.
The only bad point is that it is sad that they took the 512K Flash variant instead of the 1MB.

There is also an NXP M0, but only use as USB-Serial, not even required since the usual OTG-FS is available on the next USB-Micro on the usual PA11/PA12.
This NXP M0 could probably used to do something else too …

EDIT : The NXP M0 is also connected to SWD pins of the F407, so it can probably act as some kind of STLink as well.

I just grabbed one of them.

But, their checkout system is a bit screwed up.

It showed a page of deliver options with “undefined” where the price was supposed to be displayed. So I picked what I thought was the cheapest.
Luckily on the next page, it had the same data, but this time with prices.

Also, paying via PayPal, you end up on almost blank screen, with a message to close the window.
But the problem is, that their site didnt open a separate window for paypal, so it was impossible to close and get back to their site.

Luckily, it seems that completing the paypal payment is the last step and no further confirmation appears to be needed, and I seem to have a “confirmed” order in my history.

So fingers crossed, the order will actually get fulfilled

Yes, their website has some glitches, I faced problem with PayPal payment, but it finally get thru.
It is not my first order with them, previous order was a LinkIt-7688, and shipments are sent usually with “semi-slow boat” …

I think I must have bought something from them before, as I already had an account, but I can’t recall what it was.

Perhaps it was those EMW3165’s which I never got around to using

Yes, that was EMW3165 for me too !
For me too, this EMW3165 modules still dusting in its envelope …

ddrown wrote:I think there’s a bug in auto-negotiation, I think it’s using half duplex when it should be full.

ddrown wrote:I’ll have to fiddle with the PHY’s registers to see if I can copy his results.

martinayotte wrote:… or new STM32F7xx boards will start appearing …

I’ve received my Arch_Max board !
Powering it thru J10 USB, I didn’t saw any ttyACM discovered, so maybe current firmware doesn’t do much yet.
Since I’m always doing backups of original firmware, I’ve decided to place BOOT0 at 3V, and I saw it with dfu-util.
Making first backup, but only 64K, dfu-util refuse to go further, even with –upload-size specified.
Hexdump-ing it reveal that there is some “ChibiOS RT Test Suite” along with web page.
(But I didn’t hookup ETH cable yet …)
On the second USB J8, where the NXP is connected, it reveal a /dev/ttyACM and a MassStorage.
But opening terminal on ttyACM doesn’t much, it look quiet. The MassStorage have an mbed.htm, so cat-ing it reveal old firmware revision compared to mbed site. I’ve upgraded it after download, but to my understanding, this is the firmware that belong to the NXP, nothing related to the STM32.
Next step will be probably to give it a try by copying a STM32 firmware into the MassStorage, but I wish to make sure the “ChibiOS” isn’t more than the 64K of the first backup.

Martin

Do you have a STLink you could connect to the F4, as that should allow you to read back all Flash that is not protected

(I dont know if the F4 supports the Serial bootloader interface, as that would be another option to read the contents of the flash)

On the Arch+Max, the SWD is already connected to the NXP and doesn’t seems to be available on header, so NXP seems to act as a kind of STLink, but I’ve not seen any document how to use it, especially that it enumerate itself as “NXP LPC1768” along with the MassStorage.
I’ve try to hook up thru Serial PB6/PB7 with stm32flash, but didn’t succeeded yet. I don’t know why.
(yes, F4 support it, but last time I did was a year ago).
(BTW, an newer stm32flash-0.5 came out a month ago)

Further tomorrow …

Martin

Is the Serial bootloader on a different USART, as on the F103 its on USART 1 which is on PA9 / PA10 ??

PA9/PA10 is used as the OTG_FS_USB, so they are not available.
From what I remember on F4, the BOOT0 bootloader is looking at DFU, Serial on multiple ports and also I2C, so Serial on PB6/PB7 should work, but it didn’t.
Maybe I will need to look around the big PDFs and try several scenarios.

EDIT : This whole thing is only to be confident that original-firmware is properly done. As soon I have this confidence, I will start flashing many things : Blinker, USBSerial Telnet, SDCard, etc … I’m anxious

My board was shipped on Monday.

I’m not sure how long the shipping time from Seeed Studio is, i.e I can’t remember what postal service they use.

But I’ll let you know when mine arrives

Re: UART 1 being USB OTG

It may be worth taking a look at the schematic, as if all they did was pull one of the pins to 3.3V via a 1.5k resistor, you can probably still use them as a UART as long as nothing is pulled into the OTG port.

(Actually, this is probably the same as on my Discovery 407, so I can possibly test)

BTW. Having the NXP rather than STLink seems not so good, especially as we don’t have the firmware source code for that device

RogerClark wrote:BTW. Having the NXP rather than STLink seems not so good, especially as we don’t have the firmware source code for that device

martinayotte wrote:RogerClark wrote:BTW. Having the NXP rather than STLink seems not so good, especially as we don’t have the firmware source code for that device

stevech wrote:

I saw the user post that the board was $19. On seeed’s web store, I saw the $19 “ARCH” board was ye ole NXP M0 and the STM32 “ARCH xxx” boards started at $39, some using STM32. Apologies if I misunderstood.

The Arch Max owner’s community will grow in 5-6 weeks with another (newby) member
Should we add a special entry to this board in the Wiki?
Or you all are using mbed as IDE?

stevestrong wrote:Should we add a special entry to this board in the Wiki?

I’ve took some time today to work with that board (after I became confident that original firmware was correctly backed up).
I’ve started new Buffet sketch a bit like the one I have on Netduino2Plus :

– The on-board LED is correctly blinking (at a perfect rate, not 15x slower like @ddrown experimented)
– The USBSerial perfectly working, so all my usual TelnetServer shell commands are accessible.
– The SDCard is perfectly running (although I don’t like the card holder, I prefer pushin-pushout ones)

Next step is to make the networking running …
Not a trivial task, I presume, we will have probably to start from scratch while getting inspired by mBed.

EDIT : btw, the board price went back to original $39.95 price. Lucky are those like me who got it at $19.95 …

Martin

My board arrived today, but I’ve not had chance to do anything except work out which USB port is the mass storage device.

I saw the price had gone up on the listing page, about a week ago, but when I clicked to get more information, the price was $19 (rather than $39)
Which is really strange. As if their shopping cart maintains 2 separate prices for each item, depending on which page its being viewed from
(looks like a bug).

I wonder why they were selling them at half price for a while, This may have also been a bug / mistake which has now been corrected.

RogerClark wrote:
<…>
As if their shopping cart maintains 2 separate prices for each item, depending on which page its being viewed from
(looks like a bug).
<…>

Ray

I know Amazon, prices differently depending on your profile, so not logging in can give different prices, as does using a new account (which supposedly gives better deals to get you hooked)

Re: Car hire etc in Europe

I think the EU recently had a court ruling, basically against Expedia, whose contract forbid any hotel etc, who signs up to Expedia, to offer a cheaper deal when dealing direct with the customer.

So apparently, in the EU its now a lot cheaper to go directly to the hotel’s website, as Expedia recently hiked their surcharges.

Note. this is not personal experience, its information I got from the consumer show from the state broadcaster here in Aus (the ABC). (same name as in the US but an entirely different organisation

Martin

Do you know which pin the LED is on ?

I’ve tried using PD13 as listed in the Arch Max wiki http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/Arch_Max but nothing was flashing, so as I have an MBED account, I tried compiling their blink demo for this board, but its not flashing anything either.

I’m just uploading via the mass storage device, for both the Arduino code and also the MBED code.

BTW. In the development branch I added the recipe to enable the IDE to Export Compiled Binary.

Anyway. According to the schematic PDF, there is a LED on SPI3_SCK, which is not PD13, its on PC10.

But I tried that as well, and it didnt flash the LED either .

I will need to attach a meter to one of the pins and make it go High and Low slowly and see if I can track down if the board is working at all

Anyway, the HAL_F407 library is committed if you want to take a look (but I have not been able to test it, as I can’t get the board to work with MBED yet)

Hi Roger,

The LED nearby the RJ45 is connected to PB3 (yes, effectively, it is SPI3_SCK)
I got it working on plain ArduinoSTM F407 as well as in mBed.
(BTW, I don’t see any other LEDs than this one, so PC10 is only SDIO_D2 header and PD13 is also only on the header.)

For the new HAL_F407, I will take a look, especially that it will probably be required for the Ethernet.
I’ve got the Ethernet working, but only under mBed, this new HAL will probably help to integrate it with Arduino.

I own this board. The led is connected to PB_3 which is also call on mbed: LED1 or D13 (without P).
On my mac, copy the binary in MBED directory does not work. To upload bin file, I need to use openocd.

BTW, the mBed MassStorage is wokring on Linux, but not all the time, sometime it is hangup at the middle of the upload process, in those case, I need to power-recycle and start again.
We can also use DFU mode if BOOT0/BOOT1 are properly set.
For Serial Uploads, I wasn’t able to get it working yet, neither with stm32loader.py or stm32flash.

Thanks guys

I could not see any LEDs flashing even using the binary from mbed, which I uploaded via mass storage.

When I drop a file onto the mass storage, LEDs flash during the upload and then the board seems to reset, or perhaps just the mass storage resets.

I am not sure how I could upload via OpenOCD, as I thought the SWD lines were permanently connected to the NXP device.

I will try connecting via Serial to USART1, and make sure nothing is connected to the USB OTG

Hi Roger,

If you have trouble with MassStorage, the easiest way is to go to DFU with BOOT0 using USB.
For Serial, as I said, I didn’t manage to get it working.
Also beware that Serial PB6/PB7 is not located at the same place on recent PCB than previous version, since in the old days, it wasn’t compatible with Arduino Mega, now it is !
(The photos found on wiki are still old one, although the old one had nicer Top layer skillscreen missing on new layout, on Bottom is there)

denis wrote:I own this board. The led is connected to PB_3 which is also call on mbed: LED1 or D13 (without P).
On my mac, copy the binary in MBED directory does not work. To upload bin file, I need to use openocd.

@ddrown

Thanks for the information

My it looks like the mbed setup link in the NXP processor was incorrect for my board.

When I clicked on the html page, it installed the “SeedStudio Arch” not the “SeedStudio Arch Max”.

So I added the Arch Max from the link in @ddrown’s post to my mbed account, and now when I compiled in mbed and uploaded via mass storage, the LED is now flashing.

I double checked on mbed and the led appears to be on PB3 (like other have posted).

I must have been looking at the wrong data sheet, when I thought that SPI3_CLK was on a different pin.

I will try again via the Arduino IDE (uploading via mass storage, using the Export Compiled binary menu )

The price of the board is again reduced!

stevestrong wrote:The price of the board is again reduced!

This is good news !
Maybe I will purchase a second one …

In case anyone’s interested in a third development environment for this board (aside from mbed and stm32duino). I added support for it to ChibiOS, zip files for it are attached to this thread: http://www.chibios.com/forum/viewtopic. … 953#p25953

The demo program attached to that forum thread has the following working functions:

1. “command shell” on the debug serial port
2. very simple webserver
3. sdcard reading
4. most important feature: blinky LED

My board has finally arrived…
I am planning to evaluate it next days, so I would like to know which IDE are other happy Arch Max owners using? MBED as described here?
Or anyone tried our repo?

For all basic stuff, such USBSerial/Serial/GPIOs, and even SdCard, our STM32Duino is doing the full job.
For ETH stuff, I didn’t have much other chance to use mBed.
I wish that we can bring some of the mBed code into STM32Duino, but this tasks isn’t simple.

martinayotte wrote:I wish that we can bring some of the mBed code into STM32Duino, but this tasks isn’t simple.

stevestrong wrote:The price of the board is again reduced!

anyone else notice that the image and on the listed origin site has 2 sets of tx1/rx1
pa9/pa10 and pb6/pb7

stephen

Yes ! I’ve mentioned it in this post of the current thread : viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1162&start=40#p15038
The reason is that older PCB revision wasn’t compatible to Arduino Mega but newer revision is.
The bad side of the new revision is that silkscreen is now only printed on bottom side, there is no more pinout silkscreen on top.

Hello

I Would like acces to Lot of USART ? I can’t acces to UASRT 1 PB6 PB7 . Nothing pinOut . I’m working with Mbed Online Compiler .
Library Serial.h .. i need 3 UART or better.
Thank you for your Help !!!
Best regard …

It is probably related to the fact that they change some pin layout for Mega compatibility as mentioned here :

http://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?ti … d_Arch_Max

Note : on newest board layout, the PB6/PDB7 are switched with the PD6/PD3 to get pins compatibility with Arduino Mega.

thank for you reply .
After lot test with mbed compile OnLine Serial.h:

Serial Serial6( PB_6 , PB_7 ) = Serial Serial9( PA_9 , PA_10 );

Serial Serial8( PC_6 , PC_7 ) = Serial pc ( USBTX , USBRX );


As I am lately more involved in F4 stuff, I thought it’s time to refresh this thread a bit…
martinayotte wrote:For all basic stuff, such USBSerial/Serial/GPIOs, and even SdCard, our STM32Duino is doing the full job..

stevestrong wrote:Martin, do you still have a version where the SD card is working with our stm32duino?

martinayotte wrote:EDIT : BTW, I almost never use SD lib, but using SdFat lib from Greiman.

Well, there are a lots of errors when compiling SPI.cpp…
Are you really sure that you tried the SD card with our (Roger’s) stm32duino repo?
Do you maybe have your latest working version locally which you could share?

recently i’m playing/messing with SD Fat and SD FatEX from gremian’s repository
https://github.com/greiman/SdFat

but it’s pretty much on the F1 with the current libmaple core cores (roger’s repository). i’m not too sure about <SPI.h> on the f4 if it would ‘just works’
i’m actually wondering half way if simply copying that SPI.c and SPI.h from the F1 set of libraries and trying to use them on f4 if it would after all work would try that another time

It will not work on F4 out of the box. At least because the DMA is not compatible.
Even if I comment out the DMA stuff, it will not work for some reason (freezes at checking the TXE bit).
Victor tried to make it work for black (generic) F4 board but I think he wasn’t successful. Finally he went for the generic core of Daniel.

But I am still trying to make it work with libmaple core – yeeah, I know, it maybe doesn’t make too much sense, but this is me
Therefore the answer from Martin would be highly appreciated.
It would be great if he could share his working version, I think he also played around with the black F4 board.

I’ve used SPI with all DMA commented.
Here is the sketch in attachment.

No, I didn’t play with “black F4 board”, since I don’t have one, but I played with Netduino2Plus which is also black …

Martin, thanks, but I am actually more interested in the SPI lib and the core files you have locally.
As I said, it does not work for me if I comment out the DMA-related lines.
Could you please make a ZIP of your local /Arduino_STM32/STM32F4 folder and post it here or send me per PM?
Thanks.

a little findings on SPI on F4
http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php … 054#p27536

stevestrong wrote:Martin, thanks, but I am actually more interested in the SPI lib and the core files you have locally.

Short notice: the Arch Max 1.1 board is available at reduced price (~28USD): https://www.seeedstudio.com/Arch-Max-v1.1-p-2632.html

However, this board may eventually have a better feature/price ratio (~23USD): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/STM32F4 … 11843.html

[ddrown – Thu Jun 09, 2016 3:00 am] –
Ah hah! I had to set the autonegotiation registers before waiting for the link to come up.

Hey, ddrown, your patch saved me a lot of work and time. Thanks!

[stevestrong – Fri Jan 04, 2019 8:31 pm] –

[ddrown – Thu Jun 09, 2016 3:00 am] –
Ah hah! I had to set the autonegotiation registers before waiting for the link to come up.

Hey, ddrown, your patch saved me a lot of work and time. Thanks!

Glad to hear it!