EEVblog #900 - STM32 ARM Development Board

Dave takes a look at the ST STM32 L1 series low power ARM chips, and gets a cheap STM32L152C development board up and running with the IAR Embedded workbench compiler and STLINK/V2 interface.
Also a look at the STMcubeMX code initialisation application.

System Workbench for STM32

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[malgailany]

I'm impressed of how fast you managed to find you way to makeup things go-up and running for the first time. It took me days to figure out thing properly when I started using STM32 MCUs two years ago.

Nice video, thanks.

[EricWilliamsNeu]

We briefly used EWARM at work and the license was on a dongle. This was within the past few years. It was actually nice to be able to transfer license from person to person.

[Aemilindore]

I use Texas Instruments Tiva based Launchpads! They have been treating me superbly awesome.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Search EWARM on Findchips for IAR pricing. Be sitting down.

[pllpsy]

This board is definitely very effective as a torture tool to use on EE undergrads. /bangs head against desk

[richfiles]

I am consistently blown away by how low power some of these devices are made these days. Man... I mess with vintage calculators, so I se RDL (resistor diode logic) and RTL (resistor transistor logic) from time to time ... It's SO inefficient, power wise. Amazing how far we've come!

[LucasHartmann]

Hey Dave! Look for SystemWorkbench, its a package (simplified installer) including Eclipse, gcc, programmer and debugger. STM32CubeMX generates code for it, look for SW4STM32 while configuring the project. Also, its free software: $0, completely unrestricted, forever, source available.

[nomadic_rider]

Hi @eevblog, you might try out openstm32, which is eclipse based IDE and comes with arm-gcc

[kureigu]

Would recommend Keil for programming the STM32 families, their pack installer makes everything really easy to work with.

STM32s I've found are awesome in terms of capability, but the money you don't pay means that applications support is very lacking (almost non-existent). After 2 months I'm still waiting on someone to get back to me to resolve an issue I've been experiencing!

[AlexandreKandalintsev]

I wouldn't use metal screwdriver as a pointer -- an accidental touch of the pcb may damage the board. Or the user if it's a high-voltage application :)

[vasanthxtube]

STM32CubeL1 firmware package has got all the necessary example projects, drivers and *middlewares* that you need for the development.

[JerryWalker]

Really interesting video. I have been developing embedded systems for 30+ years (most recently PIC32) and the GUI configuration tools are really handy although I still tend to do this the 'hard' way as I am used to doing it that way. I find the GUI more useful for pcb design rather than code. I would recommend that beginners at least try configuring a project or two from scratch using the spec sheet as this is a very good way of becoming familiar with the capabilities, pitfalls etc.

[squelchedotter]

I was looking into this thing a year ago, but nothing became of it, glad you made this video!

[MrSwanley]

Do a search for the STM32 "blue pill". It's available from Banggood for less than $4 - and free shipping! (at least to me). It's crazy how much processing power is available, and even the pro tools such as a ST-Link/v2 debug dongle are pretty cheap. I never use any third party libraries, so I'm not interested in Arduino compatibility or how good or bad the ST libs are: but there's a big community out there if you want those things. The drone community in particular seem to be heavily invested in STM32-ARM. [Edit] These are not the low power STM32L, but it's still much less hungry than I'm used to: each peripheral on the board has its own clock and so you only power the bits you need.

[martin]

stm32s don't need a special compiler, standard arm-gcc works fine. CooCox IDE does a great job at getting all dependencies up and running.
It worked right out of the box with my unsupported, cheap-ass minimum system board and counterfeit stlink-v2. Just make sure to get 1.7, not 2.0 beta for now.

[obiwanjacobi]

I think that wasn't too bad of an experience. Nothing you can't figure out. Thanx for the informational video.

[leppie]

Vanilla Eclipse for C with embedded plugin with gcc and openocd is my preferred setup. It takes a bit of setup time, but a hell of alot cheaper than commercial offerings.

[ElmerFuddGun]

41:36 - only a 1 gigabyte download? Man, it is INCREDIBLE how much they can fit in such a small program! ;-) ... back in my day...

[Jenny_Digital]

I use Crossworks for ARM and I'm decently impressed with the STM32's. I do take issue with the I2C interface implementation in the Cortex M3 parts however. I can't speak for the other families I2C however.

[jaeholee]

The MDK for STMicroelectonics STM32F0 and STM32L0 is a license paid by STMicroelectronics. It is free-to-use for software developers working with STM32 devices based on the ARM Cortex-M0 and ARM Cortex-M0+ cores." – Bruce Abbott Mar 15 '16 at 20:54