11/22/2025 - Designed Schematic and routed PCB Fully

Attended the Lock in Blueprint call and had a ton of fun. I decided to make an STM32 devboard and for a twist I added a VGA connector and found a github library to help with coding. The schematic was really easy, but the PCB was a pain to route, with 84 vias and a really tight space to work with, but it came out pretty good.

11/23/2025 8 AM - Better Routing and Silkscreen

Fixed a lot of ugly routing and made the traces look better. Also went and made a logo for the board and added it. Made some more silkscreen improvements labeling LEDS, and board revision text.

11/23/2025 1 PM - BOM and Board Fix

Sourced components from LCSC and made a BOM. It comes out to $35 which I think it pretty reasonable, (this only makes 1, but its only 12 more dollars to get components so I might top the grant up).
While sourcing these, I realized that I forgot how VGA works and put the wrong connector on the board so I changed it to the female connector that and did some minor rerouting.

Going to finish up a couple other things and then submit for funding.

1/1/2026 - Assembled board Tweaked Schematic

I assembled the first board and tried programming it. Unfortunately I did not realized that the chip does not come with a USB boot loader, and I do not own an STM32 SWD programmer so I am unable to upload code or verify that it works. That being said, the power is stable and I believe that everything should work fine when I can get a programmer.

I also tweaked the schematic. I updated the crystal capacitors to be the right units (do not use 10uf use 10 pf). Finally, I added buttons for reset and boot instead of solder jumper pads as they were hard to know if they made connection or not.

I may order the new boards in the future, but for now the project is done.