Hi Ken:
You are right on target about the woes of STM32 on The Arduino IDE. I spent several sleepless nights trying to get the IDE to download the binary to the Blue Pill.
Finally I gave up on the IDE and just used the IDE to compile and link the code and then grab the .bin file and used the STLink tool chain to ram the binary to the Blue Pill using the STLink V2 interface. Surprisingly that method works pretty well.
We have way too many Micros with way too many pin counts with way too many pin configurations!
The ESP32S on the other hand works great with the Arduino IDE but the ESP32 also suffers from different pin outs and numbers of pins.
Maybe someday it will all get worked out!
73 - John - N6API
Sent from my iPhone 6!
John J. Bahun
Senior Software / Hardware Engineer - Retired (Apple DTS)
Amateur Radio Operator - N6API Extra Class as of 03/05/2019!
CFO Member #046
John Bahun