I was looking at eBay one night and saw a Maple Mini clone. It was under $5 so I took a chance. For any that don’t know, the Maple boards are Arduino like uC’s designed by Leaf Labs. They make ARM Cortex controller boards. This little board has the following short list specs:MCU: STM32F103RCBT6, a 3
Got one as well
Hi jscottb,
I read this article a few weeks ago, and decided to buy a Maple Mini clone on Ebay. Tempted by the low cost, and the decent specifications (clock-speed, flash size, ram size, extra gpio, and so on) compared to an Arduino.
Last night I was attempting to program it, using the Maple IDE, and it took a while to get things working. First thing, I needed to make sure I had the various libraries installed. My operating system is Debian Linux 8, and not so obvious what was needed.
The Maple IDE, with its Examples, Sketches, and Serial Monitor, are very similar to Arduino IDE - a home from home.
One stumbling block for me was getting the executable flashed to the Maple Mini. It was sticking in the IDE (it is supposed to send a reset to the Maple Mini that changes the mode of the usb from serial to DFU mode. Something wasn’t working in that.
I resorted to getting around the problem (i.e. not using the Maple IDE). Using the two buttons on the Maple Mini you can get it to go into Permanent Bootloader mode. (This is done by pressing reset once, wait 3 secs, press reset again, then immediately the other button and hold down 2 secs). Once in that mode, “dfu-util -l” command lists the dfu devices connected. The Maple IDE compiles sketches and puts the binaries into /tmp/buildXXXXXX/ folder (e.g. Blink.cpp.bin). Using a command like this: “dfu-util -a 1 -D /tmp/buildXXX/Blink.cpp.bin” will get the executable onto the Maple Mini. Then I reset it afterwards to get the binary running on the Maple. Note that the Maple Mini has Flash for storing binaries, and also RAM. If you send to RAM (i.e. -a 0) then the program doesn’t survive a reset.
Hoping one day to get past these issues, but even if I don’t, it’s all up and running and a very decent little MCU.
Thanks for the info SG
That is useful information you have givien!
What libraires where needed for it to work with Linux? I will try a linux install after I get home from a trip I am on now.
