Oh, I didn't mean to throw it all away and close the door!
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
Actually the firmware is prety well done and it shouldn't cause much pain to work on it, I'm totally open at porting it to new mcus.
What I meant was not not break my brain enhacing it much further... but I still have some ideas!
But when the flash 97% full, and you think on adding new stuff... ok let's do it...
An hour later you see it doesn't fit. Or it fits, but crashes without explanation.
It has happened to me to the extend of adding a single variable and causing a Hardfault!
And you couldn't debug it! The debugger directly started at hardfault... before using git this was a very painful process.
Then I really appreciated de diff view.
Suddenly, you delete an unused static variable "uint16_t temp", that you had left behind when debugging something, that was doing absolute nothing, being used nowhere...
And it was working again! I got so fed-up of that kind of unnecesary headaches, that I decided to stop for some time.
For now, I've been porting an old stm32f429 project, an oscilloscope from a german programmer, and adapting it to the new HAL libraries, as a self-training experience.
This project uses a lot of peripherals in advanced modes, so I'm learning a lot, specially timers, ADC and DMA. The datasheet is close to burning too
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
I think when I return to the T12 in few days or weeks, I'll have much clearer ideas!
I also looked for better, compatible stm32s last week. Don't need to swear that we both went to aliexpress like a bat out of hell!
Reached the black pill too... very nice mcu for the price. But the FPQ have two problems.
First, the QFP48 drops exactly in the inner part of the QFN48 footprint. Extremely close but the pins won't match.
The inner distance of the QFP is 7.3mm, while that same measure is the QFN's outer.
![](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/stm32-oled-digital-soldering-station-for-t12-handle/?action=dlattach;attach=1114042;image)
If the footprint in the pcb is bigger, then maybe it can be done.
Another problem it's located in the supply pins.
There are minor diferences, the pin 22 is Vcap in the STM32 3xx and 4xx series, while in 1xx and 0xx series it's a GPIO.
Not a big deal unless that pin is already used.
Yes, people like us can cut, solder, burn, replace, scratch and break with no problem, but most people just wants to flash the stock board.
The stm32F3xx are a nice step forward in capabilities. In a board with an unused pin 22, just scratch, solder a cap and go...
The QFN is not that hard to solder by hand though. A nice tip and few lbs of flux will get it done!
The main issue is that you won't be able to solder the bottom ground pad.
Will work anyway, however the signal noise ratio will probably suffer.
About the mcu specs... I think the 20KB will be ok.
4KB extra ram is plenty of RAM for an already done firmware that doesn't need any more.
The problem was with my 072, the poor thing was having a hard time, like women in their 50's trying to get into the 20's wedding dress
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
(Also men do! Everybody's searching for something to get offended these days haha)