Pyboard Availability Update?

[thestumbler]

A couple of months ago, I fried two PyBoards v1.1 because of a cabling error. This left me with zero spares. As I suspected, PyBoards are still not available to purchase.

Is there any current forecast for future availability?

I'm 99% sure I could repair the two busted ones by just changing out the MCU, but I suspect that is one of, if not the, component that's holding up the production.

Otherwise, are there any distributors that sell returns, of course in as-is condition? I could probably cobble a couple together if I could get ahold of a few "broken" ones.

Worst case I'm going to have to design in another solution. There's a flavor of an RP2040 module that could probably be substituted, but that'd be a big headache. Plus, I really like having a PyBoard (in its metal case) kicking around in my toolbox for general purpose debugging.

[peterhinch]

The problem is zero availability of the STM chips. I don't know what the current lead time is.

[thestumbler]

Yeah, as I suspected.

[thestumbler]

Wow, I hit pay dirt! I was meeting with an old client yesterday about a small board they want me to design. Their latest products are using the STM32H7 MCU, another difficult to buy chip. I asked what MCU they preferred for this small PCB, since it seemed that an H7 was way overkill. To my surprise, he left the meeting and came back with a tray full of STM32F405 chips we had used on a previous job years ago.

Even though we eventually settled on an RP2040 for this new board, he gave me a handful of 405 chips for me to try to repair my PyBoards.

Surely I woke up on the right side of the bed that day.

[ThomasAkam]

@dpgeorge I was wondering if there is any further information available about when pyboard v1.1 will be back in stock. I noticed that the
STM32F405RGT6 microcontroller is now in stock at Farnell (at the link below, 4771 units in stock at £12.2 each for 100+).

https://uk.farnell.com/stmicroelectronics/stm32f405rgt6/mcu-32bit-cortex-m4-168mhz-lqfp/dp/2064363