Shadoclaw Posted July 19, 2021 Report Share Posted July 19, 2021 Howdy TK, et al, Recently I was gifted with one of these Spark Core at my place of employment. While Particle has discontinued the product in question, and it does have some limitations (see below), I believe that the onboard peripherals could indeed be used to make a functional MIDIBox Sequencer, with some tinkering and bit bending. As I said, there are some limitations compared to the standard Core_STM32 module (Which I also realize has been retired, but is the closest I could find to the infrastucture used by the Spark Core): *128K Flash memory and 20K of SRAM. This pales in comparison to the 512K Flash and 64K of SRAM on the original Core_STM32 Module. I have some SRAM and EEPROM chips on order, I might be able to use those as a workaround for this. *Only 8 DIO pins (D0-D7) and 8 Analog pins (A0-A7) are available onboard. In addition, some of these pins are used for other MIDIBox related purposes: SPI is handled on A2-A5, D0 and D1 are used for the second USART, and D0 and D1 are also used for I2C. Since I do not plan to use Analog sources in my project, I believe I should be able to use DIN and DOUT Modules to overcome this limitation. *There are only 2 Hardware USARTs, one of which (SERIAL2) is used for I2C, which creates a conflict. I might be able to work around this as well, using the IIC Midi Module or some variation thereof. *With the exception of D0-D7, which are 5V Tolerant, all of the other pins are rated at 3.3V. I don't necessarily see this as too much of a problem, as again I do not plan on using any Analog, but it might prove difficult for future designs with this chip. *While the USB port is described as a full speed USB 2.0 interface, I have my doubts. Requires further testing. *VIN is rated at 3.6 to 6.0V. If I choose to use a 9V adaptor, I will have to use a 5V voltage regulator to step down the power before it hits VIN. Or I can just power it from USB. *I'm not sure, but I believe the device may be optimized to use the Arduino IDE, which limits my programming options (I might be able to port over the MIDIBox software over to the Arduino IDE... Will have to experiment with this as well) So, there are some advantages to this uC as well... *STM32F103CB chip clocked at 72Mhz out of the box *Small form factor suitable for plugging into a breadboard or daughterboard *WiFi antenna built in. Will need to experiment with this, but in theory, it may be possible to transmit MIDI data over WiFi, thus giving another virtual MIDI port So, what do you all think? Good ideas, or am I way off base? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phatline Posted July 19, 2021 Report Share Posted July 19, 2021 http://wiki.midibox.org/doku.php?id=dipcoref4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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