DEV Community: Erin Tse

Microcontroller evaluation board designed with STM32F207IGH6

Erin Tse — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 04:08:55 +0000

Features

16-Mbit SRAM
1-Gbyte or more microSD™ cards
Boot from user flash, system memory or static memory
ISO/IEC 14443 Type A and Type B smart card support
I2C 64-Kbit serial EEPROM, ST MEMS and I/O expanders compatible
IEEE 802.3-2002 compliant Ethernet connector
Two CAN 2.0 A/B channel connectors on the same DB
RS-232 communication
IrDA transceiver (supports highest version MB786 C-07 board)
USB OTG (HS and FS) with Micro-AB connector
Induction motor control connector
I2S audio DAC, headphone stereo audio jack
2 inch 240x320 TFT color LCD touch screen
Four-color light-emitting diode
camera module and expansion connector ST camera plug-in
Joystick with four directional controls and selection
Reset, wake-up, tamper, user buttons
RTC with battery backup
daughter board or expansion connector package board
JTAG, SW and trace debug support
Embedded ST-LINK / V2
5 5V power options: power jack, USB FS connector, USB HS connector, ST-LINK/V2

Description

The STM3220G-EVAL (Figure 1. & Block Diagram Figure 2.) evaluation board is a complete demo and development platform for STMicroelectronics.

Based on the STM32F2 family of ARM Cortex-M3 cores and embedded with the high-performance STM32F207IGH6.

The comprehensive hardware features of the board help users to evaluate all peripherals (USB OTG HS, USB OTG FS, Ethernet, motor control, CAN, microSD™ cards, smart cards, USART, audio, and support for DAC, RS-232, IrDA transceiver motherboard version MB786 C-07, SRAM, ST MEMS, EEPROM, etc.) and to develop applications. and development applications. The embedded ST-LINK/V2 circuit provides a debugger and programming tools for the STM32.

1.System Requirements

Windows® OS (XP, 7, 8)
USB type A to type B or Mini-B cable

2.Development tools

IAR EWARM (IAR Embedded Workbench®)
Keil® MDK-ARM™
GCC-based IDEs (free AC6: SW4STM32, Atollic® TrueSTUDIO®,...)

Demo Software The demo software is pre-loaded on the STM32F207IGH6 flash memory to facilitate the demonstration of device peripherals in standalone mode. For more information, please go to download the latest version and refer to the STM3220G-EVAL demo software on the ST website.

What are MCU chips and the future of Automotive-grade MCU chips

Erin Tse — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 11:00:29 +0000

In the context of the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the demand for automotive grade chips has skyrocketed, so much so that the inventory of this type of imported chip stock is very sufficient from the beginning of this year, and in July there was even a significant price reduction, so the supply of chips is still sufficient for the next few months.

What is the MCU for automotive grade chips?

MCU (Microcontroller Unit) is a microcontroller, also known as a microcontroller, the computer contains the CPU, memory, I/O ports, etc. integrated in a chip to achieve the computing and control of the product.

In-vehicle MCU is the core component of automotive electronic control unit (ECU), which is used in areas such as body control and driver assistance. The more bits in an in-vehicle MCU, the more complex the structure, the more processing power and the higher the unit price.

8-bit MCU for simple body control, such as air conditioning, wipers, seats, etc.
16-bit: mid-range chassis and low-end engines, such as brakes, brakes, etc.
32-bit: high-end engines, etc., such as instrument panels, engines, etc.

High barriers to automotive-grade MCU, overseas monopoly

Automotive MCU, not only the certification time is long, but also has relatively high industry barriers, and the global market is monopolized by overseas manufacturers.

The combination of strict requirements for operating temperature, lifetime and yield, complex certification process and high standards means that the import time for automotive-grade MCUs is at least 3 to 5 years, but the maximum delivery time required by vehicle manufacturers is 30 years.

Most mainstream automotive-grade MCUs have their own architecture as the main route, overseas manufacturers have achieved mass production of 32-bit products, the core manufacturers can reach thousands of material number, and IDM-based, more advantageous in production and research mobilization.

Domestic MCU is still mainly Fabless and cannot be certified separately for IATF16949 and other standards in the flow and packaging stage.

Three models of automotive-grade MCU chips

IDM is called Integrated Device Manufacture, which is a one-stop industrial operation model integrating chip design, manufacturing, packaging, testing and sales.

This industry model can well collaborate with design and manufacturing to achieve a closed-loop technology, which helps to quickly explore the potential of technology, but the disadvantage is the high operating costs and usually low returns. There are not many companies in the world with this capability, and the more representative types are: Samsung, Intel (Intel), STMicroelectronics (ST), Texas Instruments (TI), etc.

Fabless is commonly known as "fabless chip supplier" or "fabless", it is a kind of industrial operation mode that only engages in chip design and sales, and does not involve manufacturing, packaging and testing.

The disadvantage of this industrial model is that it cannot achieve the technical co-design of IDM, it is difficult to complete the strict indicators, and because it involves sales, it also needs to bear the various risks from the market. Typical representatives of this mode of enterprise are: Qualcomm (Qualcomm), Heisi, MediaTek (MTK), Broadcom (Broadcom) and so on.

Foundry is often referred to as "foundry", which is an industrial operation mode responsible for only one of the chip manufacturing, packaging or testing, not responsible for the chip design process.

This industrial model does not have to bear the market or product design defects and other decision-making risks, the disadvantage is that the investment scale is large, the cost of maintaining stable operation of the production line is high, and the need for continuous investment to improve the process level to ensure that the market is not eliminated. Typical representatives of such companies are: TSMC (TSMC), UMC (UMC), Grosvenor (Global Foundry), etc.

At present, the main domestic is Fabless, only has the design and sales and not involved in manufacturing, so it is easier to be stuck in the neck, which is also more able to accelerate the process of domestic substitution, especially to focus on the company in this industry deep plowing.

Domestic substitution is the right time

Domestic car MCU only a few factories to discuss the output of goods, applied in the car wiper, lights, windows and other low-end application scenarios. For high-end applications such as electronic steering systems, brake systems, battery management systems, etc., only a very small number of manufacturers have the ability to ship.

Most of the automotive-grade MCU products using 8-inch wafer production line, a small number of high-end cars with 12-inch. Global 8-inch wafer capacity expansion is slow, while the domestic fab 8-inch capacity is sufficient, and the domestic self-assembly rate of about 2%, the domestic replacement space.

MCU chip market space

Each new energy vehicle with MCU chips at least 35 pieces, compared with the traditional car about 30% increase in demand.

The value of pure electric vehicles is second only to power semiconductors, at 11%. Benefiting from the new energy vehicles, the demand for automotive MCU is increasing highly, and in 2021, the sales volume of automotive MCU soared 23% year-on-year to a new record of USD 7.6 billion. It is expected to reach $11.257 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 11.34%. Among them, China's automotive MCU market size reaches $4.4 billion in 2025, with a CAGR of 15.46% from 20-25.

To sum up, although some current data show that short-term inventory is still enough, but because the main source of supply or from imports, the introduction of the chip bill is bound to be tight in the future, may not have much impact for the time being, the future if there is no sign of easing will certainly be in the market reaction.

This is a relatively large demand for the tram, the pressure is still relatively large, so the future must pay more attention to the impact of this piece, and the domestic replacement of these chip companies are expected to only get stronger, especially to focus on the enterprises that have been rooted in this industry for a relatively long time.

5 Tips to Ensure Low Power Consumption of MCU

Erin Tse — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 07:23:15 +0000

Low power consumption is a very important indicator of MCU. For example, some wearable devices carry limited power. If the power consumed by the entire circuit is particularly large, there will often be insufficient power, which will affect user experience.

Usually when we are making products, the realization of basic functions is very simple, but as long as the problem of low power consumption is involved, it is more difficult. It is in the milliamp level, and the current can be hundreds to thousands of times higher than the standard. Don't be afraid when you encounter this situation, as long as you are serious, you will win. Let's take a closer look at the reasons for this below.

Tip 1: Cut off the lifeline of the peripherals - turn off the clocks of the peripherals

Let me talk about the most intuitive aspect first, which is also the aspect that engineers pay more attention to, which is to turn off the peripheral clock of the MCU. For most of the MCUs that appear on the market today, the peripheral modules correspond to a clock switch. You only need to turn on the clock of this peripheral, and you can use this peripheral normally. Of course, this peripheral will also generate corresponding power consumption; conversely, if you want this peripheral to not generate power consumption, just turn it off clock.

Tip 2: Slow down the pace of work - don't multiply the clock frequency

In addition to the power consumption of peripheral modules, there is another big power consumer that needs attention, which is the PLL and FLL modules. PLL and FLL are mainly used to multiply the frequency of the original clock signal, thereby improving the overall clock of the system, and correspondingly, its power consumption will also be raised. Therefore, before entering low power consumption, it is necessary to switch the mode, bypassing the PLL and FLL modules, so as to reduce the power consumption of the MCU as much as possible, and then switch the clock back after the MCU wakes up.

Tip 3: Contain the trickle - pay attention to the level status of the I/O port

If you think that just turning off the peripheral clock can ensure that the peripheral does not consume power, then you are too naive. If the IO port is not properly handled, it will secretly steal power consumption, but you don't know it. The specific reason is this. Generally, there will be pull-up and pull-up resistors inside or outside the IO. For example, as shown in the figure below, if an IO port has a 10KΩ pull-up resistor, pull the pin to 3.3V, However, when the MCU enters low power consumption mode, this IO port is set to output low level.

According to Ohm's law, this pin will consume 3.3V/10K=0.33mA current. If there are four or five such IO port, then a few mA are pasted in, which is a pity. So before entering low power consumption, please check the status of the IO ports one by one:
If this IO port has a pull-up, please set it as a high-level output or a high-impedance state input;
If this IO port has a pull-down, please set it as a low-level output or a high-impedance state input;

In a word, don't waste the good current on the function of generating heat. We don't rely on this temperature to warm our hands.

Tip 4: Good-neighborly and friendly cooperation—pay attention to the overall planning of I/O and peripheral ICs.

The current consumption factor of the pull-up and pull-down resistors of the IO port is relatively obvious. Next, let’s talk about a non-obvious factor: the current consumption when the IO port is connected to an external IC. If an IO port has its own pull-up, and the IC pin connected to the IO has its own pull-down, then no matter what level the pin is outputting, a certain amount of current consumption will inevitably occur. So whenever you encounter this kind of situation, you first need to read the manual of the peripheral IC, determine the status of this pin, and be aware of it; then, before controlling the sleep of the MCU, set the pull-down mode and In the input and output state, it is necessary to ensure that no trace of current is consumed by it.

Tip 5: Disconnect the debugger, don't be fooled by illusions.

There is another kind that is rather peculiar.The detected current consumption is very large, but the actual result is that I am unfounded. What is the reason? It is because the MCU is still connected to the debugger when testing the power consumption! At this time, most of the current will be taken away by the debugger, which makes the engineer feel extremely depressed for no reason. Therefore, when measuring low power consumption, you must not connect the debugger, let alone measure the current while debugging.

Summary

The low power consumption design of the MCU is a meticulous task. It is necessary to develop a good habit and re-verify whether the low power consumption meets the requirements every time a function is added, so that the factors that consume power can be eliminated anytime and anywhere.

If all the functions are designed before considering the issue of low power consumption, if you are not careful, you may have to change the structure of the program-even so, the power consumption may not be completely reduced.

Looking for someone interested in electronic component

Erin Tse — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 02:45:18 +0000

I want to discuss with someone loves electronic parts. Anyone here? Let me know please ~

MSP430 VS STM32, Which Project would you choose?

Erin Tse — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 07:09:05 +0000

Have you wondered how to choose the msp430 and stm32? In this article, our team will detail everything for you. Here we go.

16-bit MSP430

First of all MSP430MCU is a myth in the world, by TI manufacturers in 1996 to market, is the world's 16-bit monolithic and the lowest power benchmark, with a streamlined instruction set of mixed models of processor,

In the past 20 years has never been surpassed, his crystal frequency can be set, is the eyes of engineers deservedly low-power king.

msp430 series microcontroller is a 16-bit microcontroller, 51 microcontrollers for 8-bit, stm32 series for 32-bit, as the name implies, the higher the number of bits represents the ability of the microcontroller to process data faster, the higher the performance.

Why 32-bit machine processing performance is good, 8-bit machine cheap cost-effective, why we should choose a middle position of 16-bit microcontroller it. Its highlight is its ultra-low power consumption.

Literally, ultra-low power consumption is that this board has a low-power mode, after entering the low-power mode it can standby for a long time with very little consumption, waking up the cpu for work at regular intervals, which is very necessary to save energy when there are few energy sources.

The programming environment used by the microcontroller is IAR and CCS, and I use CCS, so I will explain it.

Code Composer Studio (CCS) can be downloaded from the official website, you can search directly.

There is another reason msp430 microcontroller internal integrated emulator, so directly connected to the computer through the usb can be hardware simulation, very convenient.

32-bit STM32

The stm 32 series of microcontrollers from ST is a very powerful 32-bit solution designed for embedded applications requiring high performance and low power consumption,

Specially designed ARM Cortex-M3 core, and has first-class peripherals, 1 microsecond dual 12-bit adc, 4 megabits per second UART, 18 megabits per second SPI, etc., in power consumption and integration also has a good performance.

Both series have 32 k -128 k of internal flash memory, but the difference is the maximum capacity of SRAM and the combination of peripheral interfaces.

MSP430 VS STM32

STM32 and MSP430 power consumption is slightly inferior, that is, the MSP430 is very power-saving, choose 430 applications, generally very harsh power consumption, the difference between the microamp level.

For example, the application of battery-powered portable instrumentation, the above two time is much worse, like the STM32 L series can not reach the 430 power consumption.

But STM32 library functions more convenient development, such as operating frequency in 36 MHz stm32 F101 series and operating frequency in 72 MHz, STM32 F103 series, these two series compared with the MSP430 series.

In the program has good compatibility, so that program development and upgrade become more convenient, and in the processing of operations, stm 32 speed slightly faster than MSP430, in doing floating-point operations much faster than MSP430.

In the need for complex operations in the environment, STM32 great advantage speed can not be compared, so it seems that STM32 more resistant to interference, he 16-bit product price, get a significant increase in performance than the 16-bit products, is the best choice for social product users.

Further Reading: Ti MSP430 series microcontroller introduction