STM32F3 Discovery on Windows with Eclipse and OpenOCD

Hi!

Because of a lot of requests, I have decided to make the Windows version of the tutorial for setting up STM32F3-Discovery board, with free tools.

First, download ST-LINK V2 driver from here. Open the archive and install what is in it.
Then plug the device and let the driver install.
Now, get the latest OpenOCD installer from here and extract it somewhere. Copy <openocd_path>\scripts\board\stm32f3discovery.cfg to <openocd_path>\bin folder
Now you should be able to connect to the board in Command Prompt like this:

D:\embedded\openocd-0.7.0-dev-121112115725\bin>openocd-0.7.0-dev-121112115725.ex
e -f stm32f3discovery.cfg
Open On-Chip Debugger 0.7.0-dev-00079-g08ddb19 (2012-11-12-17:14)
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
        http://openocd.sourceforge.net/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
adapter speed: 1000 kHz
srst_only separate srst_nogate srst_open_drain
Info : clock speed 1000 kHz
Info : stm32f3x.cpu: hardware has 6 breakpoints, 4 watchpoints

Now close the Command Prompt.

Download latest Eclipse.
Go to Eclipse download page and download Eclipse IDE for C/C++ developers. Extract it and start eclipse.exe. Go to Workbench.

Set up Eclipse.
Go to Help->Install New Software, select All Available Sites in Work With dropdown list. Enter "GDB Hardware Debugging" in the search box and install the package. Download Arm Eclipse Plugin from here and then go to Help->Install New Software in Eclipse. Click Add and then click archive and select the previous downloaded file. Then select the packet and install it.

Install GCC Arm Embedded toolchain from here.

Now we need some Linux tools like make and rm for Windows. Download Cygwin from here. Select whichever mirror you want. Search for "make" and select the binary from Devel dropdown. Click next and wait for it to install.
Now, download this project and import it in Eclipse Workspace. Right click project and select  Properties->C/C++ Build->Environment. Here, check if PATH variable has link to toolchain and to Cygwin binaries folders. Here, you can add <gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_6-2012q4/arm-none-eabi/include> path for the Eclipse IDE to find some headers like stdint.h.
If everything  was installed correctly you should be able to clean the project and to build it.

With the project selected, click Run->External Tools->External Tools Configurations and select from the left the configuration named OpenOCD(win). Check if the path for OpenOCD at top is correct.
Now, click Run.

After this, click Run->Debug Configurations and select from the left Navigation-debug. In the Debugger tab check if the arm-none-eabi-gdb.exe path is correct. Now click Debug and you should see the Debug Window from Eclipse and the Program counter pointing at the first instruction from main().

Read More

STM32F3-Discovery Usart with printf

Hi,

The next step after setting up the Development Environment for STM32F3-Discovery was to communicate with computer via serial port.
I have added usart support to my board using USART2 module, which had TX connected to PA2 pin and RX to PA3 pin(both with alternate function set to 7).

The next step was to connect the pins to PC serial port. I have used a MAX3232 module(note that you need a chip with 3.3V support).

After using printf function I have noticed that linker asks for some functions like _write which are used internally. I have added a file newlib_subs.c to implement these function.

You can download the example project from here.
The settings for usart communication are:
baudrate: 115200
parity: none
data bits: 8
stop bits: 1
flow control: none

If you want to use interrupts to read from USART you can use the code from here.

You can check my project via svn from my repository using:
svn checkout http://andrei-development.googlecode.com/svn/branches/dev/stm32f3-discovery

Read More

Free ARM toolchain with floating point unit support

Hi,

The previous post(STM32F3 Discovery + Eclipse + OpenOCD) was based on the CodeSourcery Lite toolchain, which doesn't support floating point unit.
I have found an alternative: gcc-arm-embedded

You just have to download the Linux installation tarball and unpack it somewhere. After this, you have to edit the file Makefile from the project from this or this post and set TC variable to the new toolchain.

You have to set it like this:

TC = /path_to_toolchain/gcc-arm-none-eabi-x_x-xxxxqx/bin/arm-none-eabi

There is another way, like I did. Enter in Terminal:

gedit ~/.bashrc

add the line at the end of the file:

PATH=$PATH:/path_to_toolchain/gcc-arm-none-eabi-x_x-xxxxqx/bin/

then save and close the file and then enter in Terminal:

source ~/.bashrc

Now you can run arm-none-eabi-gcc in every folder you like. For this case, you should set the TC just like in the picture above.

Then, you have to scroll down and find FPU variable

and set it like this:
FPU = -mfpu=fpv4-sp-d16 -mfloat-abi=hard

Now you are ready to develop great things.

Happy coding!

Read More

STM32F3 Discovery + Eclipse + OpenOCD

Hi,

ST launched in September a very interesting development board(STM32F3-Discovery). It is a very cheap one(I have got myself one for ~10$). It has a debugger integrated(STLINK) and also some great sensors:

- ST MEMS LSM303DLHC, which contains 3 axis accelerometer(to measure acceleration intensity on each axis) and 3 axis magnetometer(to measure angles to a fixed point - the Earth's magnetic North)

- ST MEMS L3GD20, which has 3 axis gyrometer(to measure rotation speed)

This board is very good for automated pilot controller projects.

After unpacking the board I have found that it was supported just by commercial software and tools. As I am an opensource kind of guy I have struggled myself some time to get this working with Eclipse, OpenOCD and a free toolchain, on Linux.

I have used Ubuntu, but I think the process is the same on every distribution. Also, with little adjustments it can work on Windows.

Here are some steps, that you have to follow to get the led blinking example to work:

1. Install Java Runtime Environment. Here are some steps for Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

2. Install Eclipse. Get Eclipse IDE from here (grab the Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers) and unpack it somewhere

3. Install GDB Hardware Debugging. Open Eclipse go to Help->Install New Software and then search for GDB Hardware Debugging and install it.

   Install GNU ARM Eclipse plugin. Get it from here and install it from Help->Install New Software->Add->Archive and select the downloaded .zip file.

4. Install some dependencies. Paste following text in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install git zlib1g-dev libtool flex bison libgmp3-dev libmpfr-dev libncurses5-dev libmpc-dev autoconf texinfo build-essential libftdi-dev libusb-1.0.0-dev

5. Install OpenOCD(version>0.6.1). Get it from here and unpack it. Then, navigate to the extracted folder and type in Terminal:

./configure --enable-maintainer-mode --enable-stlink 

make 

sudo make install

6. Add rule for Stlink to be accessed without sudo. Type in Terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-stlink.rules

Paste the following text:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="0483", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3748", MODE="0666"

Type in Terminal:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

Now, with the board connected to PC you can enter  in Terminal:

openocd -f /usr/local/share/openocd/scripts/board/stm32f3discovery.cfg

The following text should appear:

Open On-Chip Debugger 0.6.1 (2012-10-29-22:02)
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
    http://openocd.sourceforge.net/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
adapter speed: 1000 kHz
srst_only separate srst_nogate srst_open_drain
Info : clock speed 1000 kHz
Info : stm32f3x.cpu: hardware has 6 breakpoints, 4 watchpoints

You can close the Terminal now.

7. Install toolchain.  You can use Codesourcery toolchain, like described in this step, or you can use GCC Arm Embedded toolchain(from here) which has support for hardware floating point unit and which is free and it is easier to install.
For Codesourcery follow the next steps:
Go to Codesourcery and download IA32 GNU/Linux Installer. To install it open the Terminal and navigate to the folder where it is downloaded. Type:

chmod a+x arm-2012.03-56-arm-none-eabi.bin 

./arm-2012.03-56-arm-none-eabi.bin

Then select next at every step. 

8. Download sample project. Go to this page and download stm32f3.tar.gz file and unpack it.

9. Open the project in Eclipse. Open Eclipse and go to Workbench. Click File->Import and then select General->Existing Projects into Workspace. Select the downloaded project and click finish.

This is a makefile project, so you have to edit makefile if you want to change some project settings. The frst thing you should do is open the Makefile file and check at the very beginning if the toolchain path is correct. This should be like:

TC = <path_to_toolchain>/arm-none-eabi

Now you can build. right click on project name and select build. The correct output is in the Console tab from Eclipse(ignore the warnings and errors from Problems tab).

10. Debugging. After the project was builded correctly select Run->External Tools->External Tools Configuration. Select OpenOCD(restart) in the left tab and click run.

Now, right click project and select Debug as->Debug Configuration and then

select in the left stm32f3-debug and then click Debug.

Note: If you want to add more source files you can add them in the src folder. New headers should be added into hdr folder. If you want to add another folder you have to specify it like the LIB_SRCS in the Makefile and also create LIB_OBJS like variable in the Makefile.

Happy free coding and debugging! :-)

Read More