3 ms·

Looks broadly similar to the stm32h7 series that I'm familiar with. Of course all of those are out of stock and cost up to $25. Presumably these are cheaper, th

by mastax 4y ago

Looks broadly similar to the stm32h7 series that I'm familiar with. Of course all of those are out of stock and cost up to $25. Presumably these are cheaper, though don't have onboard flash memory. The documentation for the STM32s is probably better though still not impressive, and the STM32 software libraries are nothing to write home about. I think the ESP IDF might actually be better though I don't have a lot of experience with it.

blutack 4y ago
Having worked with both the ESP-IDF experience is far better than Cube MX or even HAL. FreeRTOS is properly integrated out of the box, and stateful drivers are implemented as FreeRTOS tasks. There are decent escape hatches if you need to get closer to the metal. TRM and datasheets are clean and good (and no forced registration like some vendors). H7 is a very beefy general purpose micro - more GPIO, multiple CAN, more UARTs etc. ESP shines when you need IP networking, wifi or bluetooth and can live within the (pretty generous) gpio and peripheral limitations.
phoehne 4y ago
The ARM cores used in STM32s have great support. I think, at this point, almost any language and toolchain you could ever want. Good debugger support. The RISCV cores are going to get there and that's why I'm glad Espressif is moving that way. The Xtensa based ESP's are a dead end, in my very humble opinion. I'm also not sure about licensing, but I know STM32s that you buy as development boards have a non-production or non-commercial use clause. Which sucks if you want to produce something in really small batches. I don't know if ARM based Picos or RISCV ESP32s have that same constraint. But I doubt they do.
- mastax 4y ago
  The H7 in particular had some bug which made debugging difficult, though I forget the details. I think it was fixed after a few months.
- pauljurczak 4y ago
  > I don't know if ARM based Picos or RISCV ESP32s have that same constraint. No, they don't. You can get the boards starting at about $2 a piece, which is about the same as STM32 clone boards.
MSFT_Edging 4y ago
The code generation of the STM tooling is honestly the best part of using STM32s IMO. Especially in the personal project/hobby area where sometimes you just don't feel like churning out boilerplate but also don't want to sink to arduino ide levels. The ESP-IDF framework is very nice but I haven't had much exposure to CMake so I'm still wrangling around with project structure.

by mastax 4y ago

blutack 4y ago

Having worked with both the ESP-IDF experience is far better than Cube MX or even HAL. FreeRTOS is properly integrated out of the box, and stateful drivers are implemented as FreeRTOS tasks. There are decent escape hatches if you need to get closer to the metal. TRM and datasheets are clean and good (and no forced registration like some vendors). H7 is a very beefy general purpose micro - more GPIO, multiple CAN, more UARTs etc. ESP shines when you need IP networking, wifi or bluetooth and can live within the (pretty generous) gpio and peripheral limitations.

phoehne 4y ago

The ARM cores used in STM32s have great support. I think, at this point, almost any language and toolchain you could ever want. Good debugger support. The RISCV cores are going to get there and that's why I'm glad Espressif is moving that way. The Xtensa based ESP's are a dead end, in my very humble opinion. I'm also not sure about licensing, but I know STM32s that you buy as development boards have a non-production or non-commercial use clause. Which sucks if you want to produce something in really small batches. I don't know if ARM based Picos or RISCV ESP32s have that same constraint. But I doubt they do.

mastax 4y ago
The H7 in particular had some bug which made debugging difficult, though I forget the details. I think it was fixed after a few months.
pauljurczak 4y ago
> I don't know if ARM based Picos or RISCV ESP32s have that same constraint. No, they don't. You can get the boards starting at about $2 a piece, which is about the same as STM32 clone boards.

MSFT_Edging 4y ago

The code generation of the STM tooling is honestly the best part of using STM32s IMO. Especially in the personal project/hobby area where sometimes you just don't feel like churning out boilerplate but also don't want to sink to arduino ide levels. The ESP-IDF framework is very nice but I haven't had much exposure to CMake so I'm still wrangling around with project structure.