Arduino Support

It's official, ThunderPack has been added to version 1.8 of the STM32 Arduino Cores project! This version hasn't been released yet, but support for ThunderPack will conveniently be there for Arduino when it does.

I also have another PR open to remove the need to install outside software to flash programs to the board from Arduino. This update should also benefit all STM32 boards which support USB flashing via the DFU protocol. This also led to a pretty interesting conversation about the DFU protocol and potential enhancements to the dfu-util program itself.

More Bugs, More Prototypes

In writing the Addressable LED (WS2812B) examples, I found a bug with the board design...

Naturally, an addressable LED strip should be powered by the battery and the "Batt+" pin is connected directly to the battery. This all sounds good, right? Well, imagine this: You turn your board on, the program runs a lighting program to the LED strip, then you turn the board off. At this point the board stop sending new data to the strip, but the power isn't remove because it's directly connected to the battery. So, the strip continues to display the last pattern sent to it until you physically remove it from power.  🤦

The next version of the board (rev 5) will have a pin which provides power after the on/off button.

More Ideas...

Of course I'm already thinking about what to do after the board is finalized. Here are the ideas I have running around my head currently:

• MicroPython (or CircuitPython) support.
• A version of the hardware built around the smaller 14500 battery (AA size). This would be for more compact projects and give up to 1A of power.