ArduShop tell me that shipping to Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria is relatively cheap and quick. For the rest of Europe they use a mainstream courier and those are the current costs. In the next few months they want to establish relationships with local partners in each European country to reducing shipping costs. Then consumers can buy the boards from the local distributor.
I never thought to se a Romanian site on this channel. A big surprise since i am Romanian but i don't like ardushop for its higher prices compare to other local sites.
100% agreed. This is why I love the rPI also. Unfortunately shipping is so damn expensive inside the EU and even more so from the US and Canada - which would be my second choice 😖
Interesting! Thanks for showing us that, Gary! It may or may not make financial (or shipping time) sense to me here in the US, but I still found it worth watching. 🙂
Nice, finally someone is speaking about the blackpill :) I switched also from blue to black 2 years ago for my diy projects. Mainly because I like the STM32F4 more than the F1 and because of USB C
One thing that people usually forget what ST-Link also can do is debug. I think Cube IDE and Platform IO (Also maybe new Arduino 2.0 IDE) support that functionality. So if you have nasty problem just add breakpoints and check what is really happening there.
Really great video, thanks! WeAct Studio says that they stopped the production of the Black Pill 3.1 with an STM32F411 because it got too expensive. Interesting that the Romanians can get these chips although the Magma Splash is relatively expensive.
It would be ideal to have a few more instances of manufacturers spread throughout the world. I got the email about their launch and the "home-grown" thing and yes, they are a bit more expensive. I hope they do well enough and they scale a bit so they can be priced more competitively.
"Identical" and "with differences" are mutually exclusive... jI think "functionally identical, but with a few interesting physical differences..." Sparkfun's RedFive RISC-V boards are readily available in the US.
When i heard €10 I was happy but then the shipping to The Netherlands got me down. Also here in The Netherlands most stores don’t use letter mail that costs around €2,50 but they use the more expensive package option that costs around €7. To summarize I’ll stick with a blackPill from China if you don’t mind. There are good sellers I know and have used in the past for other microcontrollers and with reviews and asking the seller you can be safe. Also if you buy more then €10 you get faster shipping. I always prefer to buy two boards never just one. But still thank you for the vid I like to keep informed
Check out Olimex as well... Which is Bulgarian companyand they have some nice boards, many of them are Open Source hardware... They also have several interesting SBC
@Gary Explains, the F103 series is a remarkable low cost microcontroller, the classic AVR 8bit microcontrollers are very nice but the big step forward to the STM32 32bit CPU is astronomical. The BlackPill version is very very nice and tremendously fast. I have to say that some F4xx microcontrollers have High speed USB peripheral which is a must for me, transferring data very fast. also DSP capabilities.
That added flash footprint looks pretty standard, and SPI flash is available in the same pinout up to at least 256 Mbit (32 Mbyte). The larger capacities may be wider than intended to fit in that footprint, but often you scan pinch the leads under the chip and still get it soldered into place.
If your blackpill isn't going into boot mode the solution is pretty easy. in blackpill boards there is a design flaw. connecting to USB in boot mode does not work as expected. Blackpill boards (especially some revisions) have floating pins for unused communication interfaces like USART. The most commonly affected pin is PA10, which is RX for USART_1. When left floating, PA10 can confuse the bootloader and prevent USB DFU recognition. Solutions: Grounding PA10! The simplest solution is to connect PA10 to ground with a resistor (e.g., 10kΩ). This ensures a known low state on the pin, preventing it from interfering with USB DFU detection. So there is no need to reinstall windows! ;-)
Are Blue/Black Pill boards good for practical applications and/or and use products? Or are they only good for development etc. Thanks for the good info!!
That depends on the product, no? If you are designing a consumer product with a display that will be produced in the millions then you will likely have a team of engineers, manager, testers, marketing etc. in that case designing a custom piece of circuitry is already part of the design. But if you are a small business making 5 items a week then you will likely just add a premade board, like the black/blue pill. In that case all you need to do is ensure your supply chain.
Science and Technology should not be reduced to such level that we start thinking whether made in Europe, China or US. That is the job of Businessmen and Politicians.
I use MDK Arm IDE, infinitely better than the Arduino IDE (which I hate). You can now get “Community Edition” which has no limitations, other than using it for commercial purposes.
I had the same problem error the bluepill not being recognized, fortunately it was just a driver that didnt install properly. It also was a chinese clone stm32 blue pill, ch32f103 by WCH,and it was advertised as such, so not a fake but an alternative touting 2usb ports, and "enhanced usb functions" compared to the orginal it says while everything being the same. It also said you couldnt use the regualr stm programming method so not exactly a drop in replacement ,I still had problems with it being recognized until i installed the right driver, (their installer tool didnt do this on its own, i lucked out by randomly running a setup.exe file in the folder the tool installed too, which proceeded to install a driver that made it be recognized) so it wasnt that easy of a setup either. But a pretty good alternative if you dont want to have to buy a seperate programmer, and at first i didnt, but being only a few dollars i got one anyway and have a few legit stm32's on the way see if there really is a difference, but its so much easier to use the usb so just a note to anoyne looking at an easier way to program these pills, try a clone maybe? They seem to offer more then just a drop in replacement, better specs, more functions, etc.
I think the deciding factor should be power consumption. If you can read your sensor for 24 months on a 2032 cell then that would beat the pico. I don't know how much power the black pill uses.
It's strange that you pointed out the usb bootloader. I've installed zadig USB for the bootloader and it hasn't given me any problems and then flash with QMK toolbox as is what I use
Maybe it's just in the US, but I can get various black pill clone boards some higher quality than others from Amazon. I understand that these also come from China, but at least returns are easy.
I really don't understand why people bother with these boards, to be honest. At least in the US, I order STM-made Nucleo boards from Mouser or DigiKey. The small form factor ones are $10-12. BUT! They come with ST-LINK so you don't have any of these connecting issues. You can use ArduinoIDE to program if you like and you'll never get any USB detection issues. I've just checked on Mouser and a NUCLEO-G431KB running at 170MHz is $12. My beloved NUCLEO-L432KC running at 80MHz is only $10. The board you're presenting is nearly $20. Hard pass for me.
The Nucleo boards are definitely nice. In the U.S., buying them through DigiKey or Mouser is not that much more than the Chinese boards, and you get them much quicker. Plus, there are a wide variety of processors to choose from, depending on your needs (fast and mostly digital, mixed analog/digital, low power). One potential downside is that they come with headers pre-soldered, whereas the Chinese boards tend to come with loose headers that you can solder yourself. Sometimes I'd rather just solder wires directly to the few pads I'm using, rather than having pins sticking out, and then having to solder to those pins. The Nucleo-64 boards have the benefit of having Arduino Uno compatible headers, plus a bunch more pin headers exposing lots more pins. A downside is that those headers stick through both sides of the board, and you have to be a little more careful about not letting them touch conductive surfaces and possibly short out.
@@GaryExplains Thank you for the reply, Gary. This is unfortunate and weird, giving that ST is a European brand. That being said, Element 14 has Nucleo boards shipping from UK. They should be cheaper.
Because I need 15 boards to automate my house. That's $45 USD for 15 BlackPills or $180USD for far bigger boards that require bigger, more expensive enclosure Not everybody is playing with their boards to kill boredom
@@alastorgdl You obviously don't have any idea how to automate a house. Using 15(!) blue pills for home automation is, quite honestly, dumb. So is using Nucleo boards, for that matter. Also, you obviously don't know what Nucleo boards are. They come in 3 form factors, the smallest (Nucleo32s) being smaller then the blue pill. Finally, people using boards for "real things" like you say, understand that a commercial grade $10 board vs. cheap Chinese one is a worthy investment in any serious project. Good quality sensors, motors, etc are a pretty penny, so chances are in serious projects a $10 uC board versus a $2 doesn't make much of a difference. Bluepills have no protection diodes on VCC. The noise on the analog pins is worse. Now compare that with the ST-Link on a Nucleo board. So it's exactly backwards: if you want to just blink an LED, by all means, get a bluepill. If you need a uC for more advanced maker projects, get Nucleo boards or similar. Oh, and for serious projects you also don't use Arduino IDE. You use CubeIDE, but I'm guessing you already knew that.
I tried to buy from the Ardu shop but nothing is clear about the process and the shipping cost as much as 2 boards, the payment is just as unclear, might as well buy from China.
Wi-Fi is essential these days. The problem is that this board costs more than twice as much as the WiFi-capable ESP32. Why the MCU manufacturing companies such as ST or Microchip does not produce boards that could be competitor of ESP32?
For other people getting Error: libusb_open() failed with LIBUSB_ERROR_ACCESS On Ubuntu I fixed it with: sudo apt -y install stlink-tools sudo systemctl restart udev
Not standard swd connector is disadvantage. Many people put this module on their PCBs and this could be a problem. What we can do is buy EU board hoping chip is original, and resolder to Chinese one
I don't think it is a non standard SWD connector, it is just about orientation. If you connected the pins upwards (opposite to the labeling orientation) then the order is right.
well apparently you can only shop in Romanian money, the euro is proposed in list but doesn't works, and no dollars, no UK pounds, no SEK, ... I checked the "english" version of the page (actually the only other language proposed beside Romanian) but still lot things are not translated. So maybe if you are in Romania it's good, but don't claim it to be European if they don't play it international. There is a good reason lot of us buy in China : they know how to play it international.
Because you support a local European business rather than the Chinese communist party. The latter is almost impossible to avoid but any little helps. Secondly you are getting a better quality board and you are guaranteed that it will use genuine parts.
@@GaryExplains said "Why do you think I am gullible?" He didn't say you're gullible. He said gullible people will believe YOU Did you actually misunderstood something so simple, Mr Explainer?
@b gg said "I think that you need to do some research on the CCP" I think you need to practice reading to differentiate "Gullible people will believe you" from "you are gullible"
If it’s not made in China, I don’t care. It’s not like most of us are building mass scale product lines around these boards. It could double or triple to $6-8 and I won’t care.
Can you make a video on the different types of stm32 processor types? There are tons of different types and never seen an explanation for proper selection. Thanks!
Great, I stopped to buy black pills because of the clone chips (sometimes give headaches). For debugging the st-link is the best option, once the project goes over certain size, the ability to inspect peripheral registers saves a lot of hair loss.
Don't be ridiculous. The manufacturing in China is top quality and it never fails. If I want a board like that it takes me ten days from China to the UK and postage is cheaper than if sent from the next town." If you have to send it back"! Let me explain. A friend of mine bought a mini amp from China and they sent the wrong model, and after contacting them they sent the right one and let him keep the other one. It is rare they make a mistake, but if they do you get it sorted fast.
@@GaryExplains Lol you are plainly not a daughter who has to buy for her father. I had visions of converting silicon saving to fashion, without daddy knowing. My dad loves your videos sir. I Have no idea what you are talking about, but I have memorised the resistor colour code because I like the pretty colours. My dad will be envious I have talked with you. thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. 🧡
their shop doesn't even allow to switch to EUR as currency on firefox (all blockers deactivated) so..with that broken shop ..and that is a basic thing! ...there is no way I'm gonna spend over 10x the money for one board. (with shipping)
It is not that hard to do own 1-2 layer boards at home. With the precise CNC they will look just like the fab ones. No big reason to wait when someone draw these boards for you. Or just order your designed boards on a fab.
Honestly… for that cash you can get like 4 of them from China and I’ve never got faulty one, so surely you’d get at least one working? And Chinese boards don’t have that USB problem and that’s quite a deal breaker for a lot of projects I would like to use black pill. It’s a big no for this board.
The Chinese BlackPill boards have exactly the same USB problem. I also have Chinese ones and the behavior is the same, in fact it is because the Magma is a true copy that has the same issues.
@@GaryExplains I also tried googling those problems and… to no avail. I can see you being proud of your country to make some stuff (my dad is from judetul Suceava, so I know it a bit as well), but something is clearly wrong here.
@Dominik Szymański What can I say, I have two boards from different manufacturers and I tired it in 3 different PCs, One was a fresh install. I have Googled the problem and found quite a lot of info about it, that is where I got the information about the clocks.
I don't know, horrendous shipping costs, expensive products and barely functioning web site where you can't even seem to change the currency to euro, not really anything to get excited about.
The shipping costs are an issue, as I mentioned. I have added a pinned comment with some more information. As for the buying in Euros, ArduShop is aware of the problem and it is hoping to update its web site soon with better options for those not in Romania.
@@BogdanTheGeek Because I also ordered the board while in Romania. The board came in 1 day and the quality is excellent. In other words the exact opposite of what you wrote. Which means you are wrong.
@@GaryExplains Oh don't worry, I apologize, as I did not wanted to ruin your privacy. I was curious as you mention quite often "here in Romania" in videos with GroundStudio and had an idea related to groundstudio products. I thought country as a general location is not that much of a privacy issue. Here in Romania, people are very friendly.
Why is anyone mentioning "returning" a defective item to China, something that was sold to you for only $3 (including shipping) ? It's precisely illogical to even hold such thoughts in your head, let alone blurt them out in public. A better approach is: 1) you buy them in advance because they're cheap and you might need one later, and 2) you buy several in case one doesn't work. If you actually use one in a project (Yay!), then you immediately buy several more as spares and for future projects (more likely, having accomplished the learning curve for that system). I almost certainly have several of these 'Pills" in my basement, but I've not yet done a project with one. But I have done multiple Arduino Uno R3 projects, and that's why I now have dozens of spares on hand. This approach is demonstrably faster and cheaper, and arguably better. Up to you of course.
Why is it illogical to return a defective device? The fact that it is practically impossible is why buying from a European company makes sense. Not everyone has the disposable income to buy boards and leave them in a basement, some people would call that wasteful.
A bit of an odd logic there.... if you buy something and its broke why shouldn’t you be able to get a working one? The fact its basically impossible is 'the problem' basically you're logic is to allow any group to produce crap with no QC and sell it just because its very cheap? As Gary says one issue is a lot of the cheap china bluepills (some, not all) is they SELL it as having an stm32 chip but actually provide a fake knock off... and again theres no customer recourse. Like this blackpill, finding local producers is always better as you a) have recourse for issues, and b) are buying genuine components and not adding fuel to gray/black market economies and other IP related theft (where do the fake stm32 knockoffs get their raw vhdl and core manufacturing data from? Are they going through waste bins of genuine manufacturers and resusing crap wafers irrespective of the flaws that make them waste in the first place?)
@@Thats_Mr_Random_Person_to_you actually I’ve never had problems with getting money back for things I’ve bought from AliExpress if I took the effort to raise dispute. They never wanted the item back if I item was broken. I am wondering who is missing QC if those boards presented by Gary have notorious problems with USB? So you can pay €14 for one expensive board that has broken USB, or €14 for 4-5 cheap board from which most probably all will be 100% fine and if one is broken you will get refund without shipping it back. Tell me, which one is wasteful?
@Dominik Szymański As I mentioned to you elsewhere I have the same USB problem with boards form China. The OP's suggestion is that we should just buy lots of boards and keep them on hand in case we need one. That is wasteful. It isn't "wasteful" to spend more money on a local product that creates jobs and pays taxes locally. If you look ONLY at the per unit cost then you are missing the bigger picture.
@@martindejong3974 I'll ask again, where are the raw materials coming from? Chips don't just fall from the sky. The raw materials need to come from somewhere.
Why does it matter? Do you have an example of any consumer products from cars to TVs to laptops where the consumer has any real choice about where the raw materials come from? If you don't then why are you asking about this board?
@@GaryExplains I'm asking so companies can diverse themselves from China, which seems to be in the midst of a collapse. Not to mention they are hell bent on world domination. Why would that be a problem? Well, they do not care about human life. They use slave labor ( see Uyghur Muslims), harvesting organs, etc, etc, etc. If you are fine with that, go for it, but I don't think anyone would care if that happened to them.
@@JoeyBaby47 Dude this is a small company that has a handful of employees and it has managed to do some manufacturing outside of China. What is your problem? Go hassle all the big corps.
@Chen Ma Oh we are. You cope with your crumbling real estate industry first and people not even being able to take out their own money from the bank lmao. Oh what's that? - 10000 social credits?
It isn't about where the components are made, but rather the board itself. Everything is multi layered today. The CPU core is designed by Arm in the UK, ST Microelectronics is a French-Italian company, the boards are printed in Romania, the parts are assembled in Romania. Where do the resistors come from? I don't know. Do you?
While not about the STM32 specifically, here is an article about a fab ST has in Italy: www.cleanroomtechnology.com/news/article_page/STMicroelectronics_joins_forces_for_accelerated_fab_rampup/177504
Maybe I'm missing something here. Why would anyone want to struggle to use this board and put up with all the problems trying to program it STM32 when a much easier solution would be to use a raspberry pi pico? I was all for trying it but after all the trouble you were having, no thanks. There are easier solutions out there. Whats the point in having USBC if you're going to have to buy a programer? They might as well put a flashing led on the board that does nothing. If you have to spend all day just to get a microcontroller to connect to your computer, you probably bought the wrong one for your project. I'm going to pass on this and stay with the pi pico.
One of the dangers of buying from AliExpress is that you can get boards with Chinese clone chips, not genuine chips from STM. I have 3 or 4 Bluepill boards with clone chips from a company called CKS. I mentioned it in passing in my video about PlatformIO as these chips give out a different ID number and you need to tell PlatformIO about the chip ID to get it to work. The Magma boards only use genuine STM chips.
this board is a joke: 10 euro for 512k flash and 100MHz? plus this crazy 10 eoro shipping ? I can get locally, in Europe , ESP32 family or Raspberry Pico , for 5-6 euro with 4/8 times bigger Flash and Ram, delivered for approx 2-3 euro in 2-3 days !!!
But what's the point to manufacture it in Europe? Just for so called pride and gimmick? Why not outsourcing the manufacturing to China and just hold a warehouse in Europe for logistic benefits? It would definitely be cheaper that way.
Who said Europe was a country? The currency for Romania is LEI. I think you have no choice but to go back to school and learn a few things about geography etc.
@@GaryExplains The English language selector doesn't work. It's not in dollars or Euros, so to me, it's just Rubbles. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not intended for international business, it was designed for Romanians and only Romanian customers. China caters to everybody even if it is in broken English. Have a nice day :-)
I don't think Ben was pointing out that it was easier to get the board through established supply chains. First he is mocking Romania by making its currency sound the same as Russia's. That is the current world situation is intentionally provocative. Secondly his statement about Europe not being a country is irrelevant.
