Bluetooth Low Energy STM32WB55 Eval Kit Unboxing

Bluetooth Low Energy STM32WB55 Eval Kit Unboxing

I’ve been working on a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based project for the past year, using the Nordic nRF52 integrated SoC. Its powered by a 64MHz ARM Cortex M4 core and Nordic provides good software stack and SDK support.

In keeping up with current industry developments, I was excited to hear about a month ago that STMicroelectronics announced their BLE SoC kit: the STM32WB.

I’ve also worked with ST microcontrollers for the past several years, and they also provide good chip level driver library support. The eye-catcher on their BLE chip is that it’s a dual-core design: A 64MHz ARM Cortex M4 to run the application, paired with a 32MHz Cortex M0+ core to run the wireless stack.

After a few weeks of scoping limited inventory, I was able to score an Eval kit:

One of the nice options in working with ARM microcontrollers is that we’re spoiled for choice on IDE options. The Free option is the one I featured today: GNU MCU Eclipse. It is a bit of a setup/install process, but the guide is pretty straightforward and it gets you a $0 development environment that is not feature or code-size limited.

6 thoughts on “Bluetooth Low Energy STM32WB55 Eval Kit Unboxing

    1. I’ve followed through some labs at a workshop, but definitely not fluent in their API to setup BLE stack on my own yet.

  1. Hello Joe,
    I am working as an intern this summer as an embedded systems engineer and I am working with this Bluetooth development board. I have the two boards connected but am not sure how to communicate from here. I am thinking that because the boards are already connected that I just need to send data over the usart but I am not sure on the protocol for acknowledgement between the two. Have you done any programs with the board yet? I would really appreciate some insight/help.

    Thanks,

    Joe

    1. Hi Joe: Its been a busy few months since I’ve checked in here. I haven’t done much programs on this platform yet, but I was able to attend a ST workshop about a 2 months ago that walked thru some setup and communications demos, as well as setting up custom profile characteristics. I’d have to review the notes. As much as I was excited about this platform at announcement, there is a gap in documentation and community support compared to Nordic. But is par for vendor entry.

    1. Hi. Thanks for reaching out. I’m not familiar with Zigbee Mesh implementations. However, ST may have some webinars or tutorial videos posted related to this topic.

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