stm32h747 discovery blank

[yakabmarci]

i just received my brand new stm32h747 discovery board, on power-up it does nothing just two LEDs light up, according to the user manual it should be preloaded with a demo.

I checked in cube prog and it reports as blank.

Is it possible that my device got damaged somehow or it is just not flashed?

aren't units tested before shipping out?

Is this a common thing? I don't remember ever receiving a discovery board blank

[Peter BENSCH]

In fact, the DISCOVERY are always delivered pre-programmed. Depending on where you got the board, a possible previous owner may have erased its flash.

However, it should not be a problem to reprogram the board and the external flash memory, as the compiled demo can be found on the STM32H747I-DISCO product website under Documentation > Compiled Demos, after unzipping in the subfolder STM32H747I-DISCO_demo/Binary.

Does it answer your question?

Regards

/Peter

[yakabmarci]

my board is brand new from mouser, i flashed the compiled demo still doesn't work

[Peter BENSCH]

If you only drag'n'drop the HEX onto the drive letter, only the STM32 is programmed, but not the external flash. Did you use the batch file for flashing because the external flash must also be programmed with the corresponding loader? 

Regards

/Peter

[Tesla DeLorean]

Pretty sure you'd need to use STM32 Cube Programmer for .HEX files, and definitely to program the QSPI via an External Loader.

Boards without software from Mouser, more apt to be ones that were returned rather than from the factory.

Check connectivity of screen, rough transit has been a problem on some DISCO boards.

[yakabmarci]

i used the batchfile

[Peter BENSCH]

Well, from a distance and without seeing how you programmed it and what feedback there was, it's hard to give advice.

You could now investigate what is causing the problem, e.g. jumper settings etc or try programming a small demo. But you certainly have a warranty with Mouser, so you should contact the seller and either exchange the DISCOVERY or ask for money back.

Regards

/Peter

[yakabmarci]

I think the issue is not with the board it is with the demos:

following this guide and flashing with the batch file doesn't work

en.STM32H747I-DISCO_demo.zip\STM32H747I-DISCO_demo\readme.txt

flashing each demo individually works but incorrectly, heavy artifacts and flickers on the display

e.g. STM32H747I-DISCO_demo\TouchGFX\Binary\TouchGFX-STM32H747I-DISCO_V1.0.0.hex

flashing tutti frutti demo works correctly with clean display:

fllowing guide en.STM32H747I-DISCO_Tutti-Frutti_demo.zip\STM32H747I-DISCO_Tutti-Frutti_DC_Demo\readme.txt

So in my opinion the demo should be updated both source and binaires, the source is not straightforward to build in CubeIDE, and compiled binary doesn't work (maybe something changed in new revisions of the board?)

So it seems my board came brand new from mouser blank.

[ACapo.1]

Same issue here with a new board being blank, same problems flashing the demo.

Also the majority of the examples in the cube IDE either do not build, do not flash or do not work.

All in all pretty poor!

[Sarra.S]

Hello all,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

I confirm the issue and I reported Internally.

Internal ticket number: 147459 (This is an internal tracking number and is not accessible or usable by customers).

Sarra

[JSext.1]

I have just purchased a number of these boards to have a few spare since I have been programming for over a year and know the board well. Previous board works fine and flashes the code written in STMcubeIDE. The new board communicates over STlink and flashes, but no activity on screen etc. Only the 5V power LED on the back is on and LD10 is red (when it should be green). I have tried the other boards and all show the same behaviour. There are no faults reported, ie halt CPU. There is however a weblink called "GETSTART", but the URL does not exist.

[ACapo.1]

The issues with these newer displays seems to be with the A03 display, the BSP code for video mode DSI doesn't work, so if you are using this code then you will get no display.

If you try building and flashing one of the Command Mode examples you will probably see it jump into life.

There are more details here: https://community.st.com/s/question/0D73W000001owXCSAY/detail

[JSext.1]

I will give that a go later tonight. It's strange that there is no demo out of the box. So the question is, how do I get my program working since it works perfectly on my old stm32h747 ddisco?

[ACapo.1]

I guess we have to wait for ST to fix the software issues.

Or recode everything to use Command mode.

[JSext.1]

I just flashed it as you said and the demo worked fine. Good to know what the issue is. I'll have to think what next to try next. Maybe source some old screens...​

[JSext.1]

Just as a quick update if it helps anyone, I swapped screen with Serial#A225300779 from a new board and replaced it with an old version with serial #A211700328 and all code worked perfectly. So its definately the new version of the screens causing the issue. Will have to wait until ST are able to resolve this issue.

[ACapo.1]

They are looking into it: https://github.com/STMicroelectronics/STM32CubeH7/issues/254

[Piranha]

Something changes withing a limits of specification, but the software doesn't work anymore - that is exactly how a broken code manifests itself. The code was always broken, it just seemed to "work" in the particular combination of fine circumstances.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Some of the pin and board level changes can get to be particularly frustrating.

A lot of things seem to be signed off when marginal, or just-about-work, the examples not only need to work, but need some robustness, as people will/do copy this code into other projects and gets into everything. A less Microsoft learned with their DDK a decade or two ago.

Boiler Plate code generation will also act as a force multiplier, so the code needs to be solid, and tested on a range of hardware, ie boards which might be custom or prolific, but not DISCO, NUCLEO, EVAL boards.

I really hope at some point the SW QA gets a lot better, and there is "Dog Fooding" among development and support staff so a lot of the annoyances are experienced first-hand and there is motivation to fix things.