The F103 microcontroller on the blue pill is the epicenter of price hiking during the semiconductor shortage. I've seen prices upwards of 35 USD for each chip. It was more expensive to get one of these chip than to get a Raspberry Pi.<p>I think it is better to use the Nucleo series of evaluation boards from ST now as they have first party support from ST.
Do these boards still have that design flaw that prevents them from working right with USB? Especially for programming.<p>I remember replacing a resistor on one four-ish years ago, so that I could use it in a usb2 port. (worked fine with a usb 1.1. hub)
On that note,, does anyone have some resources on using a phone as a USB keyboard? It would be pretty useful not to have to haul around my bulky keyboard when I'm, say, just working on my server. Requiring root is fine.