Oberon RTK

Connecting the Boards

Power, programming, and serial terminals

Overview

This page describes how to connect the development target boards.

Power

All boards can be powered through a USB connection.

  • RP2040, RP2350: there is only one USB connector.

  • STM32U585, STM32H573: use the USB connectors for ST-Link. They are labeled STLK on B-U585I-IOT02A (STM32U585, micro-USB) or USB_STLINK on STM32H573I-DK (STM32H573, USB-C), respectively.

Programming

No Debugging

All boards can be programmed via the same USB connection that powers the board.

With Debugging

  • The RP2040 and RP2350 can be programmed using a connected Raspberry Pi Debug Probe and the debug environment. Check RPi's documentation for probe wiring.

  • The STM32 MCUs can be programmed from the debug environment using the same USB connection, which will use the on-board ST-Link hardware and firmware.

Further Reading

Serial Terminals

Hardware

Module Console is a framework start-up module. It configures two serial connections on RP2040 and RP2350, one on STM32. On the RP2040 and RP2350, each serial terminal is set up for printing from each of the two cores.

RP2040, RP2350

Use a serial-to-USB converter, such as:

Make sure you use the TTL-level 3.3V version of any USB-to-serial cable, board or box, or set the voltage level accordingly if possible, else you might fry your RP.

Module Console uses the following GPIO pins for the cable, board, or box serial connections:

  • serial terminal 0 (UART0): tx = GPIO 0, rx = GPIO 1
  • serial terminal 1 (UART1): tx = GPIO 4, rx = GPIO 5

See below for the connection parameters.

The two serial connections over USB will present as serial ports on the host computer, eg. COM13 on Windows.

I am using the Waveshare USB TO 4CH TTL Converter box.

STM32U585, STM32H573

The on-board ST-Link hardware and software creates a virtual serial port on the host computer, eg. COM13 on Windows, without additional connection hardware.

On both boards, GPIO pins PA9 and PA10 are used by the ST-Link connection. This cannot be changed.

See below for the connection parameters.

Software

On the host computer, you need a serial terminal program to connect to the serial ports as outlined above.

There are many such programs available, among them:

  • Astrobe's built-in terminal. Note that you can open more than one terminal window via menu Run > Run… The Astrobe terminal is set to a fixed 38400 baud.

  • I have been using mostly ZOC9 lately, both on Windows as well as on macOS.

The serial parameters are: 38400 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no handshake.

With third-party terminals, other connection parameters can be configured – in particular higher baudrates if needed.

Last updated: 20 May 2026