It seems that the black pill isnt a direct drop in replacement for the blue pill and has some things in different places. The reset pin is in a different place and I cant find a B11 pin on it anywhere…
Has anyone had any success building a braids with the black pill? Do I just need to build an adapter to switch around some of those pins?
I think I have programmed mine right but when I plug it in I get nothing showing up on the display and nothing coming out sound wise either. I’m hoping that its just the pill and that its nothing more drastic as some of those chips in it are getting spenny.
yeah mine are sitting in a box for same reason , I have no clue how to program anything so not sure what I am going to do next please post if you come up with anything .
A pal uses various mcu’s for drones, cameras and lighting. He has no clue how to program either and uses GitHub and local programmers on fiver to get what he needs.
was thinking about hooking up with the local maker space . I am sure someone there will be able to help , and maybe I could learn to do the Arduino coding my self .
My local maker space was a brilliant resource which sadly died out during covid. Meeting other makers is always useful and I can’t recommend them enough.
Do please remember that, like here, it’s a community that only works when people put in as much as they take out so be prepared to share some time and effort.
As for arduino can I reiterate that your old pal Dave on YouTube’s Notes and Volts has a number of great Arduino intros - Sam used much of Dave’s code as examples in his early projects.
There is also a fabulous book; Brent Edstrom’s Arduino for Musicians.
The mechanism for getting code onto an micro controller varies but is pretty easy to learn and gives you access to a great making tool. Shout out if you need any help.
I looked and the Arduino’s I have they are the 32f103c8t6’s and blue but the components layout looks like the black pills .
these are the braids I got from BratAttack
it seemed like the programing wasn’t a simple plug and play like there would be extra steps to loading the software that was provided , i didn’t understand and the Arduino’s were possibly different so I put it aside .
would like to get them running I really like the Mutable Instruments braids I have .
I made a little adapter for the black pill which was pretty annoying to build, lots of repetition of small jumpers, which also didnt work. I’m thinking that I am going to have to buy a different black pill that has the same pin out as the blue pill. When I bought the first one I bought it from the developer so thought I was doing the right thing but turns out I should probably buy a knock off instead hah!
For reference this is the board I bought which I thought was just the latest version of the black pill but turns out to be something slightly different. So dont buy this if you want to build a THT braids
As for the programming I found that to be pretty straight forward. I got an ST Link 2 programmer which you can hook up with jumpers and goes straight to a USB port. The software for the programmer was a bit trickier, I usually use a mac but couldnt get the software to launch properly so busted out the old PC which ran the software fine once I had updated Java. This is the software I used: STSW-LINK004 - STM32 ST-LINK utility (replaced by STM32CubeProgrammer) - STMicroelectronics But there is also ST32Cube or something which also worked for me in terms of the programming.
I was using the hex files on the soundforce.nl site, you just gotta open them in the programmer software and hit the button. I know there had been issues with the bootloader in the past but I believe the hex file on the soundforce site has now been updated to include that.
If the only issue that you’ve got is with the programming I would suggest pushing on with it, get that st link thing if you havent got one as thats way less scary than breadboards to me haha. I reckon my issue is a hardware one with the wrong black pill which means I’ll have to wait a couple more weeks including shipping.
I couldn’t find the datasheet for the one you purchased so I couldn’t compare to the one listed on the SoundForce page, but sorry to hear that it didn’t work out. If you’re able to come up with a solution, please let us know!
I’ve been trying to gather the materials to build one of these lately and ran into some issues finding the blue pill with the proper microcontroller as well. It’s confusing because the C8 chip is one with 64kB flash memory and the CB is the 128kB (the correct one), but before I was aware of this, the “8” and the “B” looked similar enough that I didn’t catch the difference. It’s pretty much impossible to find a blue pill with the “B” microcontroller, but you can buy them separately without the board.
No idea if it’s going to work, but considering what’s available right now, it seems like the best option worth giving a shot. Either way I’ll try to remember to post an update here.
Fair warning, last time I checked it was getting hard to get the 128k version of the f103 with many sellers shipping the more common 64k version when you order them.
The weAct boards are top quality boards, I have two F411’s (one for a qmk mx keyboard and one to play with)
In addition to this they use F4 series microcontrollers which are different (better) to the ones used on the F1 series.
Are you flashing the existing hex files onto the F4’s or are you recompiling from source with the target board changed?
Even plaits only uses the stm32f3 series F37x I seem to recall.
I’ve yet to find anyone documenting succeeding at this, but it should be possible, just a question of the hacking involved.
I am not sure if you could get around that with Software alone.
Compiling the old code for the new board should be relatively easy, but I am not sure if the adcs of the f103 is used… the black pill only has one instead of two adcs on the f103.
Wow talk about confusion, there where “black pills” that where f103 based with micro or mini usb ports that are near identical to the blue pills. The new WeAct boards are f4xx based.
The single adc should not be an issue as it is still 16 channel and fast enough to sample a number of them at control rate if not audio rate. But iirc most of the MI designs use external ADC chips.
these are a strange mix they are blue and sold as the 32f103c8t6 128kb units but they have the same component layout as the black pill . so I am not sure what they are . looks like an other in between hybrid .
One last update on this for me. I never got anything working with the WeAct Black pill. Last week I started contemplating getting into the code but when I started looking at it I was like no way!
I got the STM32F103C8T6 and the markings on the chip confirm that along with the info I got in the Cube Programmer software that its 64kb and that got me a little worried. I know that people in the past have used these and said they had trouble programming and then noise issues. But I figure that atleast with the correct pin out I’d get something on the display and could figure out if the rest of its working.
I ran into a problem programming when I loaded the braids.hex first and then the bootloader, but I ended up erasing the whole chip and loading the bootloader first (makes sense right?) and then the braids.hex file. No programming errors.
I’ve had a play with it for about 20mins though and havent run into any issues, it doesnt seem noisey to me, I dont have anything to compare it to what its supposed to sound like and I’m far too lazy to do some youtube trawling. So I’m happy!! Even if it does turn out to be noisey or whatever, mine will just be a little bit different to everyone elses and Im fine with that
Next step is to get some bloody knobs that fit as these Tayda pots seem to be a bit too chunky to fit what I’ve got!!
yeah mine are still in a bin until I can find someone who can help me with this issue . I don’t know shit about loading this or that and it gives me a headache trying …
Upon seeing this thread, I wanted to check out these boards to see if I could get it to work before diving in. Oddly, I bought one that is labeled as an STM32F103C8T6, which should be 64kB. The STM32 ST-Link Utility shows 128kB of flash. I just loaded in the Through Hole Braids firmware without touching the boot loader or anything.
