This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Phillip Pearson. Original Post: Cheap Chinese STM32F103 boards Feed Title: Second p0st Feed URL: http://www.myelin.co.nz/post/rss.xml Feed Description: Tech notes and web hackery from the guy that brought you bzero, Python Community Server, the Blogging Ecosystem and the Internet Topic Exchange Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Phillip Pearson Latest Posts From Second p0st

I recently ordered a bunch of STM32F103 boards from China. They have a rectangular footprint like the Teensy or Arduino Micro, and a 48-pin STM32F103C8T6 MCU on board -- a 72MHz Cortex-M3 with 64kB of flash and 20kB of RAM. It's just the single MCU chip on board, with a bootloader, and the SWD pins brought out to a header, which should make it quite flexible; I'll be able to program/debug them with Eclipse and OpenOCD if I want full control, or I can use the STM32duino Arduino port if I just want to push code to them. The best part is that they only cost $2.25 each on Aliexpress, or about $3.50 on eBay, which is about half the cost of the chip alone when bought in the US.

The boards I've ordered are 2.1" long by 0.9" wide, with a rows of 20 pins along each side, and 0.6" from the center of one row to the other. I've made a KiCad part and footprint for them:

Part/library → myelin-kicad-libraries/stm32f103c8t6-module-china.lib

Footprint/module → myelin-kicad.pretty/stm32f103c8t6-module-china.kicad_module

These should be good for controlling LEDs over USB, or for soldering into projects where I feel that a Teensy would be too expensive.

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