Electronic – Minimal ARM circuit requirements

armmicroprocessorprototyping

I have done some development with the ATMega and I'm looking to broaden my horizons. I have a couple Cortex M4 series chips and would like make an ARM equivalent to the Breadboarduino

I plan to either etch my own board or use a breakout board for the ARM and breadboard the rest. A reference or schematic of the minimum components would be greatly appreciated.

Are there any good resources for determining the minimum required components to operate, and ideally program, an ARM chip?

UPDATE:

I'm open to alternative hardware suggestions. Below is the chip that I'm currently trying to work with:

Best Answer

This really depends on the chips you are using - you didn't specify which one you got. Typically you would need at least a crystal, decoupling caps and reset logic. The programming interface might be a simple JTAG interface.

But all of this should be stated in the chips data sheet.

Update (for the STM32F407):

Look at the following pages in the data sheet

  • 23ff. for the needed voltages (1.8-3.6V, so you need a regulator), and how to use the internal regulator (by pulling pin PDR_ON high)
  • 69ff. for the pinouts
  • 69+74 for the power supply scheme (this are the most interesting pages since they show the power supply connections and the needed capacitors)

You won't need a reset circuit (it's integrated - see page 23) or an oscillator (the integrated 16MHz oscillator is selected on startup, see page 22). So using a LQFP144 breakout board (like the one from futurlec(see bottom of page) might really be enough.

You can also look at the schematic of the STM32F4DISCOVERY board (see it's user manual, page 33. What you see there is the basic circuit - and it even contains the external crystals.