Development boards support "Arduino Shields"

19th February 2014

Mick Elliott

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Datasheet

The new Nucleo Development Boards from ST Microelectronics are now available at Mouser Electronics. The boards target anyone that wants to get started using ST's STM32 product families featuring ARM Cortex‑M0, Cortex‑M3, and Cortex‑M4 microcontrollers, and are compatible with a wide range of expansion boards.

Advanced features include two unique sets of expansion headers. The first set of expansion headers sit on the outside edges of the board, and are standard headers on all Nucleo boards. These headers allow for easy access to all peripherals of the target microcontroller during test and development. The second set of expansion headers are nestled inside the first set and are Arduino shield compatible.

These headers support the use of Arduino Uno v3 expansion boards, called "Arduino shields", allowing ST's Nucleo boards expanded access to dozens of Arduino‑compatible expansion boards. Arduino shields support a wide variety of applications, including Ethernet, LCD displays, GSM voice and data communications, ZigBee communications, WiFi networking, motor control, and music and sound synthesisers.

The boards are compatible with several development tool vendors, including C compilers from IAR Systems and Keil Tools. Free GNU-based IDEs are also supported. The free mbed IDE is also supported, allowing quick and easy drag‑n‑drop programming of the target microcontroller. The ST-LINK debugger is also supported, which can also be detached along the USB connector where the board is perforated and is supported by other ST products.

Microcontrollers supported for the first Nucleo boards include the 84MHz STM32F401, a high performance microcontroller based on the ARM Cortex‑M4. Mouser Electronics will be at Embedded World in Nuremberg (Feb 25-27) and it will be giving away over U.S. $20,000 in development tools, including the ST Nucleo.