STM32 Bringup

Introduction

Getting started with a micro-controller usually means picking up a board, an IDE, some RTOS or a set of libraries. Depending of your level of experience, your budget and the solutions you select, the learning curve may be a steep one and what you will learn can be very limited if you end up cornered in a sandbox with no understanding of what’s going on under the hood.

Commercial solutions and mature open source projects are a must if you want to develop products with some level of quality. Unfortunately their complexity is high because they have to satisfy complex requirements. Their documentation and source code when available are often hard to navigate, out of date or just not addressing what you need to learn.

Starting from scratch, on the other hand, is not something often documented and when it is, it is usually after the fact. So if you want to learn how to do it you need to catch the opportunity to watch someone going through the steps and explaining what’s going on.

I will try to capture here my own “STM32 bring up” journey using a step by step approach, writing down the problems faced and decisions taken while evolving simple projects.

Part I: Bring it up!

I proceed by small incremental steps that are easy to reproduce and simple enough to adapt to a variant of the micro-controller or a different board layout.

Pick up a toolchain, install it and check that it can build an executable.
Write a minimal bootstrap for a target micro-controller and build a first executable.
Flash the first executable in an actual board and verify that it boots.
Provide feedback by turning the user LED ON and making it blink.
Use the System Tick to handle the blinking.
Insure that RAM memory is initialized as expected for a C startup.
Structure the code according to the three stages: boot, initialization and main execution.
Publish the code to a web git repository for further evolution.

Part II: Let’s talk!

It’s time to move to a more talkative interface so that the board not only winks but also speaks. Again I will go through several steps to get to a working asynchronous serial communication.

Validate the serial connection by wiring a board with an USB to UART adapter and using a Windows Flash loader application to read the chipset flash memory.
Make sure that the code evolved so far works on the board with a serial connection.
Say hello as first transmission.
Use stm32flash as flashing tool on both Windows and Linux.
Prototype an application that tells how long the system has been running.
Write a production version of uptime application.
Bundle the standard C library output functions into an actual library.
Configure baud rate and clocks.
Handle the transmission with interrupt.

Part III: Sensors! So hot! So wet!

Implement DHT11 humidity and temperature sensor reading.
Investigate the quality of the DHT11 measurements.
Use DS18B20 digital thermometer for accurate temperature reading.
Trigger ADC conversion to read the internal voltage and temperature sensors.
Calibrate the internal temperature sensor.
Update toolchain to latest.
Build for In RAM Execution.
Perform CRC-32 flash content validation during startup.
Read a Resistor Value.

Appendices

– Factory-programmed values.