STMicroelectronics recently released the STM8S-Discovery evaluation board for their STM8S family microcontrollers, with an RRP of $7. It features a STM8S105C6 running at up to 16MHz, offering 32KB of program memory, 2KB of RAM and 1KB of data EEPROM. An ST-LINK is integrated with the evaluation board, allowing you to program and debug the microcontroller over USB. You get up to 38 general-purpose I/O pins, and a nice range of on-board peripherals to play with (UART, SPI, I²C, ADC, timers). You get an LED and a touch-sensing key built in to play with, and all of the microcontroller's pins are brought out on standard 0.1" pin headers to connect to your own circuits.
Whilst the price and power makes this an attractive platform, getting started with ST's current documentation and samples are frankly baffling for the beginner and there's not much out there in terms of community support. In light of this, I've written an STM8S-Discovery tutorial for the beginner, covering all the basics of this platform (you will probably need some basic experience with C and microcontrollers to get the most out of it, however). Yes, I know this is spam, but I thought some people here may be interested.
Has anyone else here bought one of these devices, and if so how have you got on?
Whilst the price and power makes this an attractive platform, getting started with ST's current documentation and samples are frankly baffling for the beginner and there's not much out there in terms of community support. In light of this, I've written an STM8S-Discovery tutorial for the beginner, covering all the basics of this platform (you will probably need some basic experience with C and microcontrollers to get the most out of it, however). Yes, I know this is spam, but I thought some people here may be interested.
Has anyone else here bought one of these devices, and if so how have you got on?