Mini USB C DAPLink Emulator for ARM Cortex HICs, ST-Link/V2 (STM32F103CB) and J-Link OB (Atmel SAM3U) Replacement Programmer and Debugger with 216MHz Frequency, 96KB RAM, U-Disk Drag-and-Drop

I’ll start by saying that I am a hobbyist and quite familiar with most of the common hobbyist-oriented microcontrollers (Arduino, ESP32, RPi PicoW, etc.), but I’ve never used an STM32, and thought I’d give it a try.I already knew I needed a debug probe like this to program an STM32, because the STM32 doesn’t have a USB driver on the board and can’t connect directly to a PC like other microcontrollers can. So I got this DAPlink debug probe along with an STM32 board (from the same vendor). I’m sure this DAPlink probe is great for people who know how to use it. But I just can’t figure it out very well.First, you have to solder the headers on sideways, which I’ve never seen before, but it works. See pictures. Right when you plug it in, Windows pops up a message with a web link, and the programmer opens as an external drive with some readme files (and one LED briefly flashes – the MSC U disk LED, I think). The LuatOS webpage and wiki have a lot of information about the board, but it wasn’t really enough to help me use it to program a blue pill from any IDE other than Keil uVision.I was hoping it was going to just be “plug and play” as a basically transparent interface that turned my USB data into the serial data to program the STM32 board, but it’s not so simple as that. The Arduino IDE can certainly recognize the DAPlink programmer. . . but I don’t want to overwrite the DAP link programmer itself, I want to use it to write to the target Blue Pill.After many false starts and assumptions using my more familiar development tools, I followed the seller’s tutorial on their website exactly, which uses Keil uVision IDE (which is new for me), and after a few stumbles and some initial confusion, I got it to work. You need to download Keil, then the LuatOS support library from gitee (requires an account), then configure uVision, etc., . . . but then it works perfectly! The vendor supplies a lot of sample code, and sample Keil projects and they all load and run ok on their STM32. But, they are all in C, and don’t use the familiar Arduino vernacular I am used to.Since I used this same vendor’s version of the BluePill STM32 (using Air32 MCU, sold on this same Amazon page), I followed their DAPlink and STM32 tutorial, and got their sample projects to load and run just fine. So, everything really works, and if you are a pro developer, you can take it from here. 5 Stars. . . great!However, I am not a pro developer, and am just a hobbyist. I like to use Arduino, and I spent a lot of time trying to get this same setup working with Arduino and STM Cube Programmer, with absolutely zero luck. I don’t know how to reconfigure this probe to be an STLink or a JLink debugger (which is advertised) to use with other IDEs, and the seller doesn’t provide any tutorial beyond the basic Keil uVision tutorial. If you already know how to use Keil, and that’s your development environment, then this is going to be a great product for you. If you’re new to all this, I’d probably avoid starting here.Final Rating: 5 stars if you are a pro-developer familiar with Keil uVision IDE. Probably just 1 star if you’re a hobbyist that typically uses other IDEs, or if you need to reconfigure this to be an STlink or JLink.

This is a very handy tool for debugging your code, and it works as expected. I feel this should have come with a case, but other than that, I've been happy with this interface.

it's definitely useful with the raspberry pi Petco as long as you download the English version

I was a little weirded out by the pin configuration originally but then realized that it's not really much different than the way that a jtag is constructed, only you have the raw board. I have done some initial testing with it on dev boards but haven't quite mustered up the courage to hook it up to any of my expensive hardware because I already have an STlink. Eventually I'll get there and hope that this works as well as it does with simple dev boards because these would be very good for mass-produced tool kits for the equipment I'm working with. So far so good, promising!

I am not happy with this product at all. I use ST-LINK V2 (both generic and the official version from STM). I use the STM32CubeIDE and the STM32CubeProgrammer. When I saw this product, I thought it would be compatible with this IDE/Programmer and it was not (in part because of the title saying it can replace the STLINK). Although the drivers all installed just fine, STM32Cube would not even see this programmer.When you plug it in, it tries to get you to go to a site written entirely in Chinese. Using the web browsers built in translator, it was able to translate the webpage to English...but it was incredibly difficult to understand and in the end, not helpful at all. The only directions where for the Keil IDE which I do not use (Visual Studio Code didn't even appear to support it - but since I do most of my STM32 dev in the STM32CubeIDE, that wasn't what I wanted).Anyway, I thought...no problem, I'll test the drag and drop feature. So, with my STM32 Mini System Black Board hooked up (wouldn't have used this board if I thought this was a possibility), I dragged and dropped the hex file onto the USB drive (a USB drive is created when you plug it in). It didn't really seem to do anything other than transfer the hex file to the USB drive. Not knowing what to expect, I waited for a fairly long while to see if the hex file would disappear after being transferred to the MCU or something. Eventually I decided to reset the MCU to see if it worked. Well, not only did it not work...but it appears to have bricked my board!! With my regular ST-LINK programmer, it now shows as no target device found.I don't want to even talk about how this has no 5V option (where debugging a program that uses a 5V TFT screen becomes an issue). There is also no case for it to protect it from shorting while laying around (used clear heat shrink to solve this), whereas the cheap generic ST-LINK V2 usually comes with one. The ends are not soldered on, which isn't too much of an issue other than the grounds took quite a bit of heat to the point that it almost distorted the header. The ST-LINK V2 comes presoldered as a comparison. And the cost is roughly 4x what a generic ST-LINK V2 costs, which can also do debugging in the STM32CubeIDE.Who knows if my results would've been different had I used the Keil IDE (and maybe there should be a note that says you should only use it with this IDE if that is the case??). Considering my experience, lack of a manual and cost, I wouldn't recommend this product at least for someone who is working on STM32 MCUs.