“The STM8S-DISCOVERY helps you to discover the STM8S features and to develop and share your own application. Even though the STM8S-DISCOVERY is built around an STM8S105C6T6, it allows evaluation of the main features of all the STM8S Access line MCUs. The STM8S-DISCOVERY simply plugs into a PC through a standard USB cable.” But is it all it says it is?
When writing a review I like to give the product a chance and consider that problems may be due to me not the product itself. However I have to say I have really struggled with this kit despite the best efforts of STMicroelectronics.
The STM8S-Discovary is a good looking board and offers the standard on board programmer and debugger. I also like the way you can snap the programmer off if you want to run the board alone. The board is accessed and powered via a USB which is good and standard for all dev kits now. The STM8 hosts the 8bit STM8S105C6T6 which has 32K of flash and 2K of RAM, on chip EEPROM, timers, PWM, UART, I2C, SPI and everything else you would expect from a 8bit embedded micro today. The board is also well designed to bring all the IO pin and gives you a prototyping are too. So you can see I was expecting a lot form this board.
Unfortunately after unpacking the board is were I struggled. You do not get an install CD and are sent of to the ST web site. Here you expect to find all you need. The website however and online support however is quite poor and finding the files you need, an IDE and complier was a real mess. I eventually got support from ST who pointed me at the right pages. I downloaded and used the IAR environment (note this is a third part tool) and was then able to program and debug the board.
I felt the whole experience of using this dev kit very disjointed. The board looks good but not having a IDE and complier that was easy to access made getting it going in under 15 mins, my normal target, turn in to days. The IAR IDE is very good and compares to Microchips MPLAB. This kit may only sell for £4.39 on RS but using a disjointed and having very little documentation or tutorials made my experience poor.
I would only recommend this kit to someone who is very used to working in these environments and defiantly not a starter kit. As for people moving to ST this is possible a good place to start, but allow yourself lots of time to get going and getting the best out of it.
GaryJackson
Paul - Thanks for this valuable input, we have fed back your recommendations to the microcontroller tool development team for consideration on future products. Thanks again for taking the time to review the STM8S-DISCOVERY kit.
smh - I hadn't seen this tutorial before so I'm pleased you posted it. It's very helpful and also addresses some of the missing information Paul referred to.
smh
I've used the STM8S-Discovery in a few projects now. The learning curve is steep, but on the other hand it is a lot cheaper than the Arduino etc. Minus the ST-Link (programmer) it's like a breakout board for the STM8s.
Ben Ryves has written a useful getting started tutorial here: http://www.benryves.com/journal/3567231
My biggest complaints are:
1. ST fitted male headers to the PCB rather than female (or just leaving solder pads) - this
makes it hard to wire the board up to a breadboard.
2. They could have put a bit more thought into making the board easier to use and
reprogram once the ST-Link module is detached.