Announcing: Bluepill Diagnostics ... V1.62

[flash2b]

Adjusted the Size:


Did a verification:


Got the same error..... 

[ozcar]

I'm running out of ideas. I guess you have tried another USB cable, another port on the PC and even tried plugging it into another PC if possible.

Quality control for those boards is sometimes non-existent. I have had ones with shorted pins and non-connected pins, and there have been reports of incorrect resistance values. You mentioned USB C so maybe what you have is Weact "Bluepill Plus"? I don't have one of those, but other Weact boards I have seem a bit better quality than F103 Bluepill boards I have. If there is some problem with the board I don't know why the STM32DUINO USB bootloader would be OK - maybe it uses less features/resources/whatever? What about Arduino sketches loaded to the board, especially any that use USB serial, do those all work OK?

If it is only the diagnostic code that fails, maybe you would be better off asking wherever the Mecrisp-Stellaris folk hang out.

[flash2b]

I have tried, all that with the same result unfortunately.

I have also installed the STM32duino bootloader on the same board, which works ok. Both DFU and normal COM work fine and my Win10 machines see the USB device with the corresponding VID/PID for those. Also flashed some sketches into the bluepill and that works fine as well including serial communication towards the USB via COM. So I my conclusion was the physical USBC was ok. I also did check the resistor you mentioned and it has the correct value of 1.5Kohm.

Since the diagnostics bin file was designed to diagnose the internals of many different flavors of boards/STM32s I assumed it would also be tolerant running on different boards from different sources. Also user "Vorlon" reported the same problem before me.

[dietert1]

Another fake MCU issue? I remember exchanging MCU on two bluepills after i found minor problems with their USB interfaces. The new MCUs were from Digikey and worked as expected.

Regards, Dieter

[ozcar]

...

Since the diagnostics bin file was designed to diagnose the internals of many different flavors of boards/STM32s I assumed it would also be tolerant running on different boards from different sources. Also user "Vorlon" reported the same problem before me.

In another thread here (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/dbgmcu_idcode-needed-for-some-stm32f103-clones-can-anyone-help/) somebody mentioned a board with APM32 that was not recognised. That turned out to be due to a bad regulator on the board which meant that it was getting no power from USB (but could still be programmed and run if powered by 3.3V from say ST link). I guess you would have noticed a problem like that though.

You did not say if it is a Weact board. I know they do make a Bluepill board with a USB C connector and there are some other differences from the original Bluepill boards (user button, boot select button instead of jumpers, LED on different pin, and provision for optional flash chip). But maybe there are other "Bluepills" with USB C. You must at least be suspicious about it, or else why are you trying to run the diagnostics?

Vorlon did not say much, so hard to know if they had the same problem (where USB works, but not for BP diagnostics).

[flash2b]

This is my board, a PC13 variant.





I was hoping to run diagnostics on this board to learn more about it. I read that the tool could determine variants of the STM32 which I was interested in to find out myself.

I see now I need to clean up the back with some IPA....

[iMo]

Where is the 1k5 resistor on your pcb? Is that the R10 wired to D+ ?

[flash2b]

That is R10 : 152 = 1.5Kohm

[iMo]

It is long time back as we messed at stm32duino forum (the old one owned by RogerC) but as I can remember the "MYS" is an indication of a fake.. Doublecheck..
https://www.stm32duino.com/

[iMo]

I searched and dietert1 wrote "MYS" is a fake as well.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/yet-another-question-about-the-stm32-clones/msg4403002/#msg4403002

[flash2b]

Bummer, I see it now the F is on the second line and should be STM32F on the first line.

I have researched the WeAct pills, are they legit? They do not have a BOOT1 jumper......

[ozcar]

I have researched the WeAct pills, are they legit? They do not have a BOOT1 jumper......

Weact have a reasonably good reputation over on www.stm32duino.com.  It was on an earlier version of that site that the name "Bluepill" originated. There have been Bluepills, Redpills and Blackpills, all similar but with some differences in pinouts, buttons and jumpers. The lines can get a bit blurred as colour of PCB alone is probably not a real good thing to go on!

This is the board I was referring to, which Weact call Bluepill Plus:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006110046576.html

I don't have any of those, but I do have boards (genuine Weact as far as I know) which are very similar but have STM32F411CE on them, and PCBs are black. I have not had any trouble with them, but obviously I would not expect the Bluepill diagnostics to run on them, and I'm not aware of any similar diagnostic for STM32F411.

[iMo]

Yep, the old stm32duino.com forum started (RogerClark and Co.) early 2015 afaik, then it was moved under STM (perhaps end 2019). Therefore you may find various "cores" and various "bootloaders" versions there. The BluePill and perhaps a dozen of other board names originated there.

It started with Maple board and LibMaple core (plus some newer versions of it). The first company with the Maple (F103) board was company called LeafLabs.com (which finished with the Maple series in 2016) and the stm32duino.com took over its LibMaple core, adding a lot of fixes and enhancements to it in the next 4 years (I messed there a lot as well and it was a great fun!!). Also a new HAL based core version started.

At that early times there was none issue with fakes (the far-east vendors did not produce the F1xx clones at that time). Also at that time we discovered the STM32F103 (and higher) has got twice the advertised flash

In the following years the far-east producers managed the F1xx technology and the issues with BluePills started. Then the F3xx clones appeared, not sure F4xx clones are so spread, however.

The new stm32duino.com (since 2019 "owned/hosted" by the STM) moved to the HAL based STM32 core, but you will still find the older cores in the new forum.

[flash2b]

I have order the board that ozcar advised me, with a STM32F103CBT6 (128Kb) chip.



The board and the chip loop Genuine and are happily recognized by the STM32 CubeProgrammer App.

So I need to changes something to the bluepill diagnostics file in order to run it on the new board since this is a PB21 and not a PC13 ?

[bson]

[Exploit a silicon bug in genuine STM32F1xx chips where the BGMCU_IDCODE cannot be read from within the MCU without a SWD or JTAG interface connected.

Oh, I had no idea!  This is actually useful.  We can make all software, if it can read the IDCODE, stop and wait for a debugger to attach.

Not so useful for the fake parts, I suppose.