Development boards / Microcontrollers - part 2 - STM32

 About

Development boards with STM32 MCU are more advanced environment to create prototypes and electronic devices. 

Anyway a lot of STM MCU's with Arm^® Cortex^® processors is already used in devices around us.

What is STM32?

STM32 is the family of 32-bit microcontrollers based on the Arm^® Cortex^® processors.

URL: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32-32-bit-arm-cortex-mcus.html

This page contains all informations about STM32 Microcontrollers (specifications, comparisions, manual, documentation etc.)

STM32 MCU Model - Source: https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/arm-32-bit-microcontrollers.htm

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Each MCU has own datasheet with reference manual about usage / programming MCU. 

Take some example:

URL: https://www.st.com/resource/en/reference_manual/rm0390-stm32f446xx-advanced-armbased-32bit-mcus-stmicroelectronics.pdf

 

Direct Memory Access (DMA)

It is very powerful feature of STM32 by this we have possibility to move data between peripherals and devices without blocking our ARM processor.

 

More about - URL: https://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/training/technical/product_training/group0/10/5f/2c/5e/70/3e/49/8c/STM32G0-System-Direct-memory-access-controller-DMA/files/STM32G0-System-Direct-memory-access-controller-DMA.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.STM32G0-System-Direct-memory-access-controller-DMA.pdf

 

General about DMA - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16l_ymlfcs

Development boards - Comparisions

 It is a plenty of development boards with STM32 MCU. 

 

The most popular: 

• Nucleo board
• Discovery board
• Blue pill board

URL: https://stm32-base.org/boards/ 

URL: https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/s/stmicroelectronics/stm32-kits

Here is comparision of few popular solutions.

 

Development board - STM32F103RB Nucleo-64 with STLINK

For example - STM32 Nucleo-64 with STLINK

 

STM32 Nucleo-64 with STLINK - Source: https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/nucleo-f103rb.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

URL: https://www.st.com/resource/en/user_manual/um1724-stm32-nucleo64-boards-mb1136-stmicroelectronics.pdf

 

In this datasheet (see URL) is everything about use of choosed development board (pinout, connections, jumpers, size, schematics, power consumptions, warnings etc). So with that rich document of information it is easy to start work with board straight away after unboxing.

Development board - Discovery STM32F411VET6

This is my favorite board because it has a lot of input / outputs, 9 axis sensors, 512Kbytes and ARM CORTEX M4 100Mhz clock, DAC, 2x USB Connectors

 

STM32F411VET6 Development board - Source: Private gallery

 URL: https://www.micro-semiconductor.com/datasheet/ea-STM32F411VCT6TR.pdf

Datasheet of STM32F411VET6

 

Should be useful in prototypes of various applications.

Integrated Development Environment for STM32 from ST Electronics (CubeIDE)

 

Currently IDE provided by ST Electronics helps a lot for configuration all peripherals, clocks, timers, outputs, inputs. It generates configuration to C code.

CubeIDE - Pinout configuration - Source: Private gallery

CubeIDE - Clock configuration - Source: Private gallery

URL: https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/stm32cubeide.html

This page contains IDE documentations, manuals, and files to download

 

 

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQWhNH-gpOA 

This movie could help to configure you first project.

Low level programing (Registers) / Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

When we creating firmware, we have a lot of possibilities, starting from low-level programming on registers, through using provided libraries (HAL) written in C, that do the lion's share of the work for us. It depends of us what we want to use to programming our part of firmware (C, C++, ASM)

 

Example register map - Source: STM32F446xx manual

 

 

 

 URL: https://www.st.com/resource/en/user_manual/um1725-description-of-stm32f4-hal-and-lowlayer-drivers-stmicroelectronics.pdf

 

In this link is description of STM32F4 HAL and low-level drivers.

Example projects

Here is few links of amazing projects based on STM32

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trb-22K-YVY (Quadcopter)
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3WeZdz6CA (Advance safety door lock)
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuSWYvLeZuk (Robot line follower)
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGGt_DOZ2us (Dual Wheel Self-balanced Video Car Robot)
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Ngo6aeP3A (6 Axis Robot)