STMicroelectronics has added yet another entry in its Nucleo boards range, the Nucleo-64 development board powered by STM32WL55JCI MCU. The main highlight of this board is its wireless communication capabilities. Thanks to the STM32WL55JC MCU, the board is capable of LoRa, (G)FSK, (G)MSK, and BPSK modulation radios. Apart from this, the board also boasts of Arduino Uno V3 connectivity support which makes it compatible with most of the specialized shields out there.
Nucleo-64 board bridges the gap between hobbyist and professional prototyping by providing two breakout options in a single board: an Arduino Uno V3 expansion connector style and STM morpho pin headers full access to STM32WL I/Os. The onboard MCU contains two processors. The high-performance embedded processor, i.e., Cortex-M4, is one of them. Another one is the most energy-efficient Arm processor available, i.e., Cortex-M0+. Along with this, it comes with 256-Kbyte Flash memory and 64-Kbyte RAM. Thus this board harnesses the power of two 32-bit Arm processors in a single package.
One more great feature of the board is that it does not require any additional probes for programming as it integrates the ST-LINK-V3E debugger and programmer. The board comes with USB re-enumeration capabilities, including mass storage, Virtual COM port, and debug port.
Hardware aspects of Nucleo-64 board
At first look, the board might seem to have many jumpers and headers, but they are there just to make things easy for us. The Arduino Uno V3 headers allow it to be used with all the Arduino shields available in the market. This makes the board a strong competitor and a good replacement for Arduino boards where wireless communication is required.
You can either use the USB connector or directly provide it with an external 5V regulated supply on its Vin pin to power the board. The board features three I2C buses, two USART, one LPUART, and two SPI ports. The onboard RF transceiver supports a frequency range of 150MHz to 960MHz. The board also provides multiple 4-channel 16-bit and 32-bit timers, which support motor control applications.
Talking about the form factor, the board comes with 70×70 mm, which is pretty compact for a board possessing such features. The hardware platform of this board is fully open source. The board is also capable of Over The Air (OTA) firmware updates due to its wireless capabilities.
Coming to the software part, the board supports a wide range of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), which include IAR Embedded Workbench, MDK-ARM, and STM32CubeIDE. Among these IDEs, STM32CubeIDE provides comprehensive software HAL libraries and various packaged software examples for the faster development of projects. These examples are written in the C/C++ programming language.
Nucleo-64 board currently retails for around $42 on its official product page, although it might differ on other retailer’s pages. All the images and technical specifications are also taken from the same page.
Harsh Chaudhary is an engineering student currently pursuing Electrical Engineering. He’s a robotics and tech enthusiast and likes to write about stuff related to IoT and embedded systems. His vision is to use Robotics to make the life of humans easier.
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