WeAct Studio MiniSTM32H743 Core Board

Overview

The MiniSTM32H743 Core board is a compact development board equipped with an STM32H743VIT6 microcontroller. It features a variety of peripherals, including a user LED and button, a display, and external SPI and QuadSPI NOR flash memory.

Key Features

  • STM32 microcontroller in LQFP100 package

  • USB OTG or full-speed device

  • 1 user LED

  • User, boot, and reset push-buttons

  • 32.768 kHz and 25MHz HSE crystal oscillators

  • External NOR Flash memories: 64-Mbit Quad-SPI and 64-Mbit SPI

  • Board connectors:

    • Camera (8 bit) connector

    • ST7735 TFT-LCD 160 x 80 pixels (RGB565 3-SPI)

    • microSD™ card

    • USB Type-C Connector

    • SWD header for external debugger

    • 2x 40-pin GPIO connector

MiniSTM32H743 Core Board

MiniSTM32H743 Core Board (Credit: WeAct Studio)

More information about the board can be found on the Mini_STM32H743 website.

Hardware

The MiniSTM32H743 Core board provides the following hardware components:

  • STM32H743VIT6 in LQFP100 package

  • ARM 32-bit Cortex-M7 CPU with FPU

  • Chrom-ART Accelerator

  • Hardware JPEG Codec

  • 480 MHz max CPU frequency

  • VDD from 1.62 V to 3.6 V

  • 2 MB Flash

  • ~1 MB SRAM

  • High-resolution timer (2.1 ns)

  • 32-bit timers(2)

  • 16-bit timers(10)

  • SPI(6)

  • I2C(4)

  • I2S (3)

  • USART(4)

  • UART(4)

  • USB OTG Full Speed and High Speed(1)

  • USB OTG Full Speed(1)

  • CAN FD(2)

  • SAI(4)

  • SPDIF_Rx(4)

  • HDMI_CEC(1)

  • Dual Mode Quad SPI(1)

  • Camera Interface

  • GPIO (up to 82) with external interrupt capability

  • 16-bit ADC(3) with 16 channels

  • 12-bit DAC with 2 channels(2)

  • True Random Number Generator (RNG)

  • 16-channel DMA

  • LCD-TFT Controller with XGA resolution

More information about STM32H743 can be found here:

Supported Features

The mini_stm32h743 board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

NVIC

on-chip

nested vector interrupt controller

WDT

on-chip

watchdog

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

FLASH

on-chip

flash memory

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

SPI

on-chip

spi

QSPI NOR

on-chip

off-chip flash

SDMMC

on-chip

disk access

DISPLAY

on-chip

display

Other hardware features have not been enabled yet for this board.

The default configuration per core can be found in the defconfig file: boards/weact/mini_stm32h743/mini_stm32h743_defconfig

Pin Mapping

MiniSTM32H743 Core board has 5 GPIO controllers. These controllers are responsible for pin muxing, input/output, pull-up, etc.

For more details please refer to Mini_STM32H743 website.

Default Zephyr Peripheral Mapping:

The MiniSTM32H743 Core board is configured as follows

  • USER_LED : PE3

  • USER_PB : PC13

  • SPI1 SCK/MISO/MOSI/NSS : PB3/PB4/PD7/PD6 (NOR Flash memory)

  • SPI4 SCK/MOSI/NSS : PE12/PE14/PE11 (LCD)

  • QuadSPI CLK/NCS/IO0/IO1/IO2/IO3 : PB2/PB6/PD11/PD12/PE2/PD13 (NOR Flash memory)

  • SDMMC1 CLK/DCMD/CD/D0/D1/D2/D3 : PC12/PD2/PD4/PC8/PC9/PC10/PC11 (microSD card)

  • USB DM/DP : PA11/PA12 (USB CDC ACM)

System Clock

The STM32H743VI System Clock can be driven by an internal or external oscillator, as well as by the main PLL clock. By default, the System clock is driven by the PLL clock at 240MHz. PLL clock is fed by a 25MHz high speed external clock.

Serial Port (USB CDC ACM)

The Zephyr console output is assigned to the USB CDC ACM virtual serial port. Virtual COM port interface. Default communication settings are 115200 8N1.

Programming and Debugging

The MiniSTM32H743 Core board facilitates firmware flashing via the USB DFU bootloader. This method simplifies the process of updating images, although it doesn’t provide debugging capabilities. However, the board provides header pins for the Serial Wire Debug (SWD) interface, which can be used to connect an external debugger, such as ST-Link.

Flashing

To activate the bootloader, follow these steps:

  1. Press and hold the BOOT0 key.

  2. While still holding the BOOT0 key, press and release the RESET key.

  3. Wait for 0.5 seconds, then release the BOOT0 key.

Upon successful execution of these steps, the device will transition into bootloader mode and present itself as a USB DFU Mode device. You can program the device using the west tool or the STM32CubeProgrammer.

Flashing an application to MiniSTM32H743

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

First, put the board in bootloader mode as described above. Then build and flash the application in the usual way. Just add CONFIG_BOOT_DELAY=5000 to the configuration, so that USB CDC ACM is initialized before any text is printed, as below:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b mini_stm32h743 samples/hello_world -- -DCONFIG_BOOT_DELAY=5000
west flash

Run a serial host program to connect with your board:

$ minicom -D <tty_device> -b 115200

Then, press the RESET button, you should see the following message after few seconds:

Hello World! mini_stm32h743

Replace <tty_device> with the port where the board XIAO BLE can be found. For example, under Linux, /dev/ttyACM0.

Debugging

This current Zephyr port does not support debugging.

Testing the LEDs in the MiniSTM32H743

There is a sample that allows to test that LED on the board are working properly with Zephyr:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b mini_stm32h743 samples/basic/blinky -- -DCONFIG_BOOT_DELAY=5000
west flash

You can build and flash the examples to make sure Zephyr is running correctly on your board. The LED definitions can be found in boards/weact/mini_stm32h743/mini_stm32h743.dts.

Testing shell over USB in the MiniSTM32H743

There is a sample that allows to test shell interface over USB CDC ACM interface with Zephyr:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b mini_stm32h743 samples/subsys/shell/shell_module -- -DCONFIG_BOOT_DELAY=5000
west flash