aroldorosenberg wrote: ↑Sun Oct 28, 2018 5:42 pm
And why would that stop them from putting the same chip in a more convenient form factor? They also have arduino uno-shaped boards for the Atmega328, I really don't see how selling a bluepill would stop them from selling a different product
Seriously?
If you look closely at the image I embeded, you will note that the board is likely sourced directly from the same Chinese manufacturer that sells to other Chinese distributors. It fills a niche in their products portfolio. Selling another STMF1XX would involve sourcing an already manufactured board or contracting to have one built. Or, maybe they have their own pick-n-place like Adafruit has.
Considering the last maybe, operating a pick-n-place machine for a new product requires some serious work; designing a board, producing the board, manually assembling and testing the board, rework, ordering the boards for a production run, sourcing and ordering the bulk parts, scheduling the production run, testing, loading the optional bootloader, warehousing the hardware , advertising, and selling, shipping.
All the same time, a percent of the new product sales impacts sales of the original product... worst case is that the new product sells well but the old product (with better acquisition to sale profits) ceases to sale. The run-up investment for the newly produced board may not be recovered if sales are not brisk. Results? Lost profits.
Anyone wanting a few boards in the form factor you suggested, could have a few boards produced and using hot-air can transplant the uC from a cheap blue board to the new board.
But to be rudely honest, there is no way in hell that I would produce a new F1xx board: maybe an F4 or 32L series. The F1xx is simply too old of an architecture.
Ray
