I pre-ordered the STM32F4DIS-BB and the STM32F4DIS-LCD in November and received the products in December.
The package contained the boards and a card with basic instructions, but no further reference material (I expected a cd-rom) .. and a link to www.element14.com/stm32f4-expansion for "all relevant documentation, schematics, source code, and binaries". However, I was unable to locate any reference material there either.
The manufacturer's web page for the product, http://armkits.com/product/DM-STF4BB.asp states "Embest provides a CD containing the uC/OS-II BSP and plenty of software examples, board schematic and user manual to help customer better understanding this board and develop their own applications.", however I could not locate any of the data on their website.
I initially contacted Newark Electronics' technical support group and was initially told that "the CD rom is with the STM32F4 Discovery board"; after convincing the technical support rep that that was not the case I was referred to the customer support department. To their credit, they did immediately immediately ship a replacement product via overnight delivery but there was no CD in the replacement package, either.
I then emailed the support for Embest (the actual board manufacturer), who replied that "The final version CD data will be finish in two weeks, then the element14 will put it on element14's website.", but they did offer to provide the CD earlier if required .. I asked if there was somewhere that the CD could be downloaded, and they replied that there was, but that they needed the serial numbers from the boards first .. examining the boards, I could not locate any serial numbers.
Since the boards are effectively useless without the accompaning technical data, I'm stuck waiting either for Embest to realize that the boards do not have serial numbers .. or finish the product CD.
While I do understand that we sometimes ship product before it's really "finished" I would have expected to have at least preliminary technical data available; even if it's not complete or completely correct, having something is better than having nothing!!
At it is, there is nothing and I would have a hard time recommending these products. Hopefully Newark/Element14/Embest will get their acts together shortly and these will turn out to be useful.
Followup: Carlos Wei at Embest (weizy@embedinfo.com) informed me that Element14 requested that the products be shipped without the CD and was kind enough to make the CD available for me to download.
