Simplified development of context awareness functions, integration of smart peripherals

ST announced that it has begun sampling the new STM32 microcontroller mezzanine board B-F446E-96B01A. Released for the 96Boards Consumer Edition (CE) platform, this board can simplify the development of smart mobile, embedded, and digital home devices.

The B-F446E-96B01A, one of the market's first 96-board CE small mezzanine specification cards, simplifies the development of context-aware capabilities. Integrating ST's powerful and highly efficient STM32F446 microcontroller, it features an ARM® Cortex®-M4F core, smart peripherals, and onboard accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor, and microphone.

Functional expansion can also be easily implemented using expansion boards or modules belonging to both ecosystems via Arduino Uno and Seeedstudio Grove connectors. This includes various functions such as light sensors, humidity sensors, wireless communication interfaces, and user-interface devices.



Immediate development possible using ST's ecosystem

The 96-board CE specification can simplify the development of products based on ARM Cortex-A processors and Linux operating systems such as Android. It is a method that miniaturizes the computing board form factor and specifies standardized connector locations for basic I/O such as Wi-Fi, BLE, USB, MicroSD, and HDMI. Based on this specification, low-speed and high-speed peripheral connectors can also be standardized, allowing for the expansion of functionality by adding mezzanine boards such as ST's B-F446E-96B01A.

Developers can use the B-F446E-96B01A within the same ecosystem as ST's proven STM32 Nucleo boards, which offer convenience and performance. This means they can access resources such as the STM32CubeMX initialization code generator, application-code samples, software snippets, and hardware APIs. The mezzanine board comes with an embedded ST-Link debugger, eliminating the need for a separate debug probe, and enables drag-and-drop flash programming. Additionally, direct access to ARM mbed™ online tools allows developers to start development immediately without the need for software installation.