cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/766830

STM32C0 is a new line of Cortex M0+ Microcontrollers this year. Low-end STM32 chips have been trying to dethrone the 8-bit crowd by offering a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ for some time, and I welcome this competition. STM32C0 is cost-optimized with 8-pin to 48-pin form factors, and targeting very low end with 6kB SRAM and 48 MHz clock speed.

SPI, UART, I2C, 4+ MHz XTAL and 32kHz XTAL support, multiple timers for PWM, 12-bit ADC with best case 2.5 Megasamples / second.

Not bad for 61-cents (quantity 1k) at Digikey, ehh?

I think the 8-bitters still seem to have more I/O features, but this is a pretty competitive 32-bit chip on the low end. ST-micro is selling this chip as “entry-level 32-bit”, saying that you can keep code-compatibility as you scale up your projects. After all, ARM is ARM, be it a tiny Cortex M0+ or a higher end M33, M4 or M7 chip.

For people hoping to scale designs up and down, adding STM32C0 line chips is probably welcome to the STM32 hobbyists.

  • @dragontamerOPEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    I dunno why the super-low end $1 uCs interest me so much. Its not like I’m mass producing any design that actually needs to come down this cheap, lol.

    But yeah, STM32C0 is in a different league than what Mega2560 or ARMmite. Its just so much cheaper / lower end. I’d say STM32C0 is aiming at a PIC12 or ATTiny replacement, at this $1 price point.

    • MapleEngineerMEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Have you tried one of the SOT23-6 microcontrollers? I have a few ATTINY 9s and 10s.

      • @dragontamerOPEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I do wanna design my own boards eventually, but I’m sticking with premade boards and at smallest, DIP-8 packages for easy breadboarding or prototype boards.

        AVR DD comes in DIP28 and under $2, with the latest and greatest updates from Microchip.

        STM32C0 is surface mount only so it’s probably not something I’m actually gonna play with. But I do gaze upon it with awe.

        • MapleEngineerMEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          It comes in what look like SOIC-8 and QFP packages. They have gull wing pins. Those are straight forward to solder using a small chisel to soldering iron and dead simple with a GW tip. I can show you how to do it if you like. Check out the banner picture at [email protected]. I soldered that chip with a simple pencil iron and a 2 mm chisel tip.

          • @dragontamerOPEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            I actually do have a hot-air gun, a pancake-griddle, and a soldering iron + some lab experience from college a few years ago :-) (Heat from below + Hot-air heat from above leads to more consistency. A real life hot-plate is much more expensive than $20 pancake griddles though. You can’t get around the hot-air gun though for a lot of these parts)

            I’m not against soldering. Its the designing of the PCB board that trips me up.

            When its DIP-8, I can just buy proto-boards / breadboards and a few wires and everything hooks up quite well. I do have a few SOIC8 to DIP8 boards when I need to use an SOIC-8 or other SMT board though… but its an extra step that’s kinda annoying.

            My knowledge gap is KiCAD. So sticking with PDIP8 and anything that has a SMT->DIP conversion board is my preference.

            I guess your point is that there’s plenty of conversion boards for SOT-6 to DIP or whatever? Which is true, but… I really should just start taking advantage of Digikey Red + KiCAD and start making proper boards. Those converter boards are more expensive than a custom USA-made Digikey-Red 2-layer board in practice. Its just a knowledge gap of KiCAD that’s stopping me from doing this…