In the new release of firmware for the TS100, I have moved the system from using a software-driven bit-bang of the output to hardware-based timers. The issue here is that we cannot just use normal PWM! Why can’t we just use normal PWM? Soldering Iron drive Schematic The above image shows a small extract from the TS100 schematics, with the PWM signal from the STM32. The soldering iron tip is driven by the back to back MOSFETs(Q1A/B)....
The time has come that I finally need to look into getting SD cards to work with the stm32. Looking online there seems to be a few really great resources for connecting to a SD card over spi from a smaller lower power however I could not find any guides for the STM32 line of chips. I am currently working using the HAL libraries as this allows for flexibility in working with different chips (in theory!...
Most of my current projects are using the very, very nice stm32f103 series of chips, as these provide excellent performance per dollar cost. The embedded DMA in these chips is a massive help in getting a project up and running without any struggle for cpu power. I find the DMA documentation to be lacking at best with getting this system up and running using the new HAL drivers from STM. While this is actually quite an easy system to get up and running, I could not find any nice notes on how the system should be setup and things to be aware of....
TS100 The ts100 is a portable DC powered soldering iron released by minidso. The unit offers between 25-70W of output power at the tip depending on the input voltage, and has removable tips (Not compatible with other irons as far as I know). Sadly the unit is crippled with their system for changing settings, while the unit supports nice options such as a customizable cutoff voltage; wake on motion, and automatic sleep times....
#Talking to a I2C EEPROM using the STM32 HAL libraries This mostly a note to my future self. This code is based on the excellent answers provided at the ST forums, but combined here as a complete class. This was used to talk to a standard I2C EEPROM, 24LC256. The following header file definitions are required for the class : #define EEPROM_ADDRESS 0xA0 #define EEPROM_MAXPKT 32 //(page size) #define EEPROM_WRITE 10 //time to wait in ms #define EEPROM_TIMEOUT 5*EEPROM_WRITE //timeout while writing #define EEPROM_SECTIONSIZE 64 These setup the I2C address, the maximum page size of the EEPROM (32 used here for compadability)....