11–20 of 34 posts
The F103 microcontroller on the blue pill is the epicenter of price hiking during the semiconductor shortage. I've seen prices upwards of 35 USD for each chip. It was more expensive to get one of these chip than to get a Raspberry Pi. I think it is better to use the Nucleo series of evaluation boards from ST now as they have first party support from ST.
Can someone explain what this is actual for? Is this just a tutorial for creating your own DIY USB client device?
The F103 microcontroller on the blue pill is the epicenter of price hiking during the semiconductor shortage. I've seen prices upwards of 35 USD for each chip. It was more expensive to get one of these chip than to get a Raspberry Pi. I think it is better to use the Nucleo series of evaluation boards from ST now as they have first party support from ST.
Jeez, I paid 1/3 of that for my black pills, and they're objectively better in every metric.
The F103 microcontroller on the blue pill is the epicenter of price hiking during the semiconductor shortage. I've seen prices upwards of 35 USD for each chip. It was more expensive to get one of these chip than to get a Raspberry Pi. I think it is better to use the Nucleo series of evaluation boards from ST now as they have first party support from ST.
I remember replacing a resistor on one four-ish years ago, so that I could use it in a usb2 port. (worked fine with a usb 1.1. hub)
Can someone explain what this is actual for? Is this just a tutorial for creating your own DIY USB client device?
Windows HID interface is very flexible IIRC, and even added I2C support to the HID module or something... in Windows 8 or so? I don't know all the details, but as I understand it, you don't necessarily need a USB License ($5000/year membership fee) to have a microcontroller running USB-HID across Windows. Though I haven't figured out all the details of how all the mechanics work, its still interesting to work through…
You'd get assigned a VendorID if you have a USB license: That is a USB-IF thing, not a Microsoft thing. Then each licensee gets to assign its own ProductIDs.
There is no authentication in the core USB protocol: A device can declare any VendorID. Major microcontroller board manufacturers such as Sparkfun and PJRC provide specific VendorID/ProductIDs to be used by DIY projects using their boards ... but I've seen some of those being reused by other boards. I have also seen the VendorID 0xf055 used by free open source firmware.
The F103 microcontroller on the blue pill is the epicenter of price hiking during the semiconductor shortage. I've seen prices upwards of 35 USD for each chip. It was more expensive to get one of these chip than to get a Raspberry Pi. I think it is better to use the Nucleo series of evaluation boards from ST now as they have first party support from ST.
Don't the Pis still go for 100 a pop or has that finally normalized now?
Can someone explain what this is actual for? Is this just a tutorial for creating your own DIY USB client device?
The common feature among these boards is that they have relatively full-featured USB client support in hardware. This is different from other hobbyist embedded boards, such as most Arduinos, for example, which have only a USB virtual serial interface via a discrete chip for the purpose of uploading and debugging firmware. So if you can make the board look like a USB keyboard, and it has enough I/O to handle a matrix of keyboard switches, then with the right firmware like QMK, you've got yourself the building blocks of a custom keyboard.
My info is stale as of the start of the pandemic, when I gave up my mechanical-keyboard hobby and pivoted to DSLR-based videoconferencing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One example might be bridging an old dumb keyboard into working as a usb keyboard.
Could it also be used to bridge a BT keyboard to USB for the semi-rare cases where having a wired keyboard is necessary (BIOS access, boot loader, login screen etc.)? I expected this type of product to exist, but couldn't really find a good one after a cursory look.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One example might be bridging an old dumb keyboard into working as a usb keyboard.
Could it also be used to bridge a BT keyboard to USB for the semi-rare cases where having a wired keyboard is necessary (BIOS access, boot loader, login screen etc.)? I expected this type of product to exist, but couldn't really find a good one after a cursory look.
You might be able to DIY it with a Raspberry Pi Pico W, by gluing together the picow_bt_example_hid_host_demo and tinyusb_dev_hid_multiple_interface examples from https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples