02. March 2014 2 min read

Beginner STM32 Nucleo F401RE Tutorial mbed

I have gotten ST new mbed.org programmable Nucleo F401RE development board which is also Arudino compatible. It shows the amount of dedication ST has put into this board to make Cortex core even more accessible to newbies. Teaming up with mbed.org they have created simple framework (which at the moment lacks library base) that will enable simple C/C++ framework to program STM32 micro-controllers. Another great news is something I have been long carving for - online IDE with compiler which generates .bin code that you can load on to Nucleo development board.

Getting started

Best start is to follow rules on back of your STM32F401 Nucleo packaging. After the USB Storage Device pops up the real work starts. Register on mbed.org and then go to Compiler (top right corner next to Dashboard). It opens simple IDE in which you have many useful buttons, probably the most interesting is the Import. This Import button enables you to import published code from others, but be aware what Nucleo supports as you might soon find out that there are many libraries that are still hardware specific. After you have opened the Compiler you can write the code (blinky led is somehow classical hello world application in embedded) you hit Compile button and you will get .bin file which you save on your computer or directly to board. Once you save or copy it to board it will somehow vanish - it will not appear in storage filesystem, but do not be alert, as it just means file is being executed. Missing here is some sort of debugger so that we could see where code is stuck and if it is indeed running, but so far mbed.org does not provide such tool.

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