StreamLine
This page documents the new StreamLine series of development boards. If you are looking for the previous series, that is document here: STM32World Legacy.
Rationale
A number of STM32World Legacy boards have been developed, and produced, and in general the "system" worked very well. It did however have one fatal flaw which was the sole cause of it never being considered for more widespread production. This flaw was the board to board connector.
The original boards used a 2x20 standard pin header on each side giving a result of 80 pins. In terms of connectivity this was a pretty good solution. It did however present some issues:
- Cost - the long ping 2x20 connectors are fairly expensive - around $0.80 each - so $1.60 per board. This may not sound that high but when producing a lot it becomes a serious cost.
- Manufacturing - the headers can not be manufactured with traditional SMD technologies but require a manual step or hand soldering.
- Fragile - when shipping or disconnecting boards it is hard not to bend one or more pins and once bend it becomes extremely difficult to reconnect them.
To get around this flaw a new "connector" was considered and after a long search the best solution was the standard PCI-E X4 connector.
Backplane
The overall idea is to base StreamLine around a passive backplane. The backplane contains a number of PCI connectors with 2 x 49 pins (98) that is simply connected in a parallel bus.
Standard Pinout
| Alt | Function | Pin | Pin | Function | Alt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GND | A1 | B1 | GND | ||
| NRST | A2 | B2 | Boot0 | ||
| U1 | A3 | B3 | U2 | ||
| A4 | B4 | ||||
| A5 | B5 | ||||
| A6 | B6 | ||||
| A7 | B7 | ||||
| A8 | B8 | ||||
| A9 | B9 | ||||
| A10 | B10 | ||||
| A11 | B11 | ||||
| A12 | B12 | ||||
| A13 | B13 | ||||
| A14 | B14 | ||||
| A15 | B15 | ||||
| A16 | B16 | ||||
| A17 | B17 | ||||
| A18 | B18 | ||||
| A19 | B19 | ||||
| A20 | B20 | ||||
| A21 | B21 | ||||
| A22 | B22 | ||||
| A23 | B23 | ||||
| A24 | B24 | ||||
| A25 | B25 | ||||
| A26 | B26 | ||||
| A27 | B27 | ||||
| A28 | B28 | ||||
| A29 | B29 | ||||
| A30 | B30 | ||||
| A31 | B31 | ||||
| A32 | B32 | ||||
| A33 | B33 | ||||
| A34 | B34 | ||||
| A35 | B35 | ||||
| A36 | B36 | ||||
| A37 | B37 | ||||
| A38 | B38 | ||||
| A39 | B39 | ||||
| A40 | B40 | ||||
| A41 | B41 | ||||
| A42 | B42 | ||||
| A43 | B43 | ||||
| A44 | B44 | ||||
| A45 | B45 | ||||
| A46 | B46 | ||||
| A47 | B47 | ||||
| A48 | B48 | ||||
| A49 | B49 |