Breadboard Power Module

Breadboard Power Module

Jan. 27, 2016

A simple source of +5 volts and +3.3 volts for digital experiments and +/- 5 volts for analog experiments with an on/off switch. Also includes LED's to show that outputs are powered.

Needs a regulated 5 volt DC power plug input. Uses a LD1117 LDO voltage regulator to generate a 1 amp 3.3 volt output and a LT1617 voltage inverter to convert 5 volts into a 100 mA -5 volt output.

Design

Pin headers are supplied for breadboard output. They are not labelled but are in the same order as terminal block output. Terminal block output is supplied for connecting heavier wires. The board fabrication company did not understand the tab shaped pins on the stock DC power jack footprint so the last revision of the board switches to a custom footprint with very large holes. Switching the input to a USB connector would make sense especially with the current ubiquity of 5 volt USB chargers.

Files

The Kicad files are here.

Creating System Workbench for STM32 projects using STM32CubeMX

The output of CubeMX is not compatible with the current System Workbench. The procedure I outline here is a quick method of getting them to work together.

Working with STM32CubeMX in Linux

I recently discovered STM32CubeMX, it's a great way to quickly get something running on any of the STM32 MCU's. I got it to work with the MDK-ARM and TrueSTUDIO demo versions in Windows. I prefer Linux for development work and don't have the budget (hobbyist) for full versions.

System Workbench for STM32 (SW4STM32) beta is available and can be made to work on Linux but is not in sync with cube. Both STM32CubeMX and SW4STM32 are evolving at a good pace (Aug 2015) and have been for some time. Currently Cube projects imported into SW4STM32 will not build even if the instructions on the System Workspace are followed.

To get around these problems I have created a makefile that builds Cube output for SW4STM32.

aMon - Another small system monitor.

I recently wrote a small command line program for minimal resource single board computers. It is intended to aid experimentation and testing of boards based of processors like Atmel's AVRs and ST's STM32s. It features limited line editing (backspace), command history, registers, argument parsing and number formatting.