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Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
estimator7292 · 40 minutes ago
Except when they don't. Last time I tried an ST part, I specifically bought one that advertised UART bootloader.

It didn't. Every piece of documentation I could find said that it did, but it would never respond. Forums were full of people complaining about this problem for years with no response from ST. No datasheet or marketing update, no errata. You just get a useless chip and it's your problem now. They also never responded to any of my direct emails or messages.

Every time I've tried an ST part, it's been hell and I eventually gave up and used an Atmel part instead. Every time.

Catbert59 · 38 minutes ago
Please name the device.
Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
05 · 3 hours ago
> Thanks to Zephyr.

That only gets you proper support for a couple vendors (Nordic, ST), everything else is a nightmare. Even with better-supported vendors, there are whole swaths of things that aren't properly supported and you need to directly call code from underlying vendor SDK to make things work. That bodge makes the whole project non-portable. Even some simple things like ADC DMA on ST F1 series..

Catbert59 · 2 hours ago
Can't share your experience.

Sometimes stuff is missing. But that's implemented and upstreamed quickly.

Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
estimator7292 · 4 hours ago
ST doesn't want to make one because then you can do OTA firmware updates without their special $60 usb to serial adapter that won't work for non-st parts
Catbert59 · 3 hours ago
All of the newer STM32s have ROM-bootloaders that support UART- or even USB-flash.

For SWD you can one of the ST-Link clones or the free open implementations of it.

Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
05 · 7 hours ago
Lots of horror stories from people who had to respin their boards because you couldn't buy ST at any price when they redirected all their output to car manufacturers during the chip shortage. They may be cheaper now but vendor lock-in never helped anyone (except that vendor) in the long run. Oh, and most Chinese wifi gadgets use Beken nowadays because it's even cheaper than Espressif, what are the chances of them switching to a more expensive chipset instead?
Catbert59 · 6 hours ago
We never had problems as a small vendor with ST during the chip crisis and all distributors honored our delivery contracts. Even most big companies don't deal with ST directly when it comes to the last mile.

Porting stuff to another microcontroller would be easy as we are not using too proprietary features... as long the uC has SPI/I2C and a bunch of timers the embedded developers will be happy. Thanks to Zephyr.

Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
05 · 9 hours ago
ST are overpriced, no self respecting internet of shit vendor would be caught dead using their MCUs when cheap clones exist.
Catbert59 · 9 hours ago
Most clones aren't even close compatible to their originals.

Maybe some basic stuff like usart, i2c works fine. But the the deeper you dig into the specialties the more you will have problems.

And STM32s and expensive? Maybe if you buy them from Digikey or Mouser. With the right distributor they are dirt cheap.

Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
riedel · 11 hours ago
My experience with microcontrollers is not up to date. Most of the stuff I did was 15 years ago.I remember, Espressif really disrupted the market. Things changed already with Advent of Arduino. Before that people wrote a lot of asm code inline and MCUs particularly from microchip had really good documentations (sure some quirks and errata always appeared later, but as I remember they found their ways into data sheets and application notes). Particularly as binary blobs e.g. for network appeared the API went from well defined hardware interfaces to libraries, etc. Today it is even common for some of those domain specific IC that typically rather contain an MCU that you have to sign NDAs to get access to documentation of some parts.
Catbert59 · 10 hours ago
> Most of the stuff I did was 15 years ago.I remember, Espressif really disrupted the market.

They still are.

No vendor until now was able to push out microcontrollers with a solid Wifi integration. Sometimes you can find weird 2-chip-solutions.

I still wonder why ST doesn't bring one. That device would be a multi-billion-business.

Catbert59 commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
whatever1 · 11 hours ago
Is it common for microcontrollers to lack comprehensive documentation, or is it just espressif?
Catbert59 · 10 hours ago
Espressif has stellar datasheets and a very good HAL (esp-idf) with an established community process.

This is more about the application running on that device.

Catbert59 commented on World Wide Lightning Location Network   wwlln.net/... · Posted by u/perihelions
yonatan8070 · a day ago
> The STM32H7 ADC is great for many many things

Is it any different from the ADC on other MCUs?

Catbert59 · a day ago
Not really. Just very good ones.

I also work a lot with ESP32s. Their ADCs (non-linearity, and with the integrated calibration you loose resolution) don't make too much fun.

Catbert59 commented on World Wide Lightning Location Network   wwlln.net/... · Posted by u/perihelions
CheeseFromLidl · a day ago
I’d like to ask to repeat this experiment but with a ferrite core next to the sensor (touching it). On the low spectrum (below a few MHz?) the magnetic component in the electromagnetic wave becomes dominant. Which is why receivers in shortwave radio and in e.g. DCF77 use a ferrite antenna. The ferrite’s length should be perpendicular to the line formed by the sensor and the location of the storm.

Edit: you’re reading at 400 Hz so you’ll read phenomena below 200 Hz

Catbert59 · a day ago
Will do. The experiment isn't yet dismantled.

Going to write the ferrite core on my next shopping list.

Catbert59 commented on World Wide Lightning Location Network   wwlln.net/... · Posted by u/perihelions
sunshinesnacks · a day ago
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but ECMWF provides a lot of data and forecasts for free [1]. And they are increasing the amount of data that is free [2].

[1] https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data

[2] https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/news/2025/ecmwf-...

Catbert59 · a day ago
The second URL sounds great. Thanks for posting.

u/Catbert59

KarmaCake day171July 27, 2025View Original