Learning STM32 NUCLEO-F303RE for EV and Embedded Systems (Complete Beginner)

[Anderson_EEE]

Hello everyone,

I'm a final-year Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) student aspiring to build my career in the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry, particularly in areas such as Battery Management Systems (BMS), Power Electronics, Motor Control, Embedded Systems, and eventually R&D.

I recently decided to learn the STM32 NUCLEO-F303RE as my primary development platform because I understand it is widely used for motor control, real-time embedded applications, and industrial systems.

I am a complete beginner to STM32 and embedded systems (although I have basic C programming knowledge), and I'd like to learn it the right way rather than just following random tutorials.

I'm looking for guidance on the following:

1. What is the best learning roadmap from beginner to advanced for the STM32 NUCLEO-F303RE?
2. In what order should I learn the peripherals (GPIO, Timers, PWM, ADC, UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, DMA, etc.)?
3. Which official documents should I read first (User Manual, Datasheet, Reference Manual, Application Notes)?
4. Which concepts should I understand deeply versus those that can be learned later?
5. What beginner, intermediate, and advanced projects would you recommend for someone targeting the EV industry?
6. Are there any recommended books, courses, YouTube channels, or ST application notes that you consider essential?
7. At what stage should I start learning FreeRTOS?
8. What common mistakes do beginners make while learning STM32, and how can I avoid them?
9. Are there any EV-oriented example projects or reference designs from ST that you would recommend studying?

My goal is not just to learn STM32 programming but to understand how it is used in real engineering applications such as BMS, motor control, battery monitoring, power electronics, and automotive embedded systems.

I can dedicate around 6 hours per day to learning over the next few months, so I'm looking for a structured roadmap that helps me build both strong fundamentals and industry-relevant skills.

Thank you for your time and guidance.

[waclawek.jan]

1. In microcontrollers, there is no “best”. Not in learning roadmap, not in programming aproaches. But whichever you choose, be warned, that there’s no free lunch, and unlearning any shortcuts you take is extremely hard if not impossible.

This said, the way recommended by ST is to use CubeIDE+CubeMX+possibly Cube/HAL. Cube/LL is available, but in my opinion it’s a superfluous renaming of registers.

My recommendation of the hard way is to use register-level programming. There are no ready-made guidelines, no support from ST. I’ve tried to write up something and something, but my time and resources are severely limited. You may want to look around the internet too.

2. In that order, maybe bring DMA forward after TIM

3. All of them; and add Errata to your chip, manual and schematics to your Nucleo board. You can leave appnotes for later perhaps, most of them are not that much helpful. The Reference Manual is your bread and butter, read at least up to the GPIO chapter and skim the rest until you start to work with given peripheral. Don’t be deterred by the number of pages. Most chapters are relatively confused narrative which at least skim through (there are snippets of wisdom in them, scattered around), but study thoroughly the block diagram at its beginning and the registers chapters at its end.

4. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Write many experimental programs. By many I mean dozens. YES, DOZENS. Give yourself fun tasks - blinking is good start and it can be done in dozens of ways - formulate theories how the hardware works and/or how to do things in software, then implement and enjoy. Many things won’t work as you expect, that’s where you truly learn.

5. Any. Start with the simple, and as I’ve said, do them many. You’ll quickly realize what’s fun and what’s not. Did I mention it HAS to be FUN?

6. I wish.

7. I never did. I have some basic understanding of it and I marginally participated in projects where it was used, but I actively avoid it. It’s a whole different world from the loop/state-machine/interrupt based “traditional” mcu programming, with its rules and mindset, and it’s probably either one or the other, I can’t imagine one could have a mindset working equally well in both. The promise of RTOS providers is, that it solves notorious problems, but my take is, that it just replaces those problems with other notorious problems. The cost/benefit is IMO not in favour of RTOS for other than big multi-person projects, although some tasks are indeed hard to pull out without one (notoriously, using extensive libraries e.g. for USB or ETH, which are not written with the “traditional” method in mind). YMMV.

8. I don’t teach so I don’t know.

9. I don’t know.

> structured roadmap that helps me build both strong fundamentals and industry-relevant skills

Well, I hope it will work out for you. My personal experience is anything but.

JW

[David Littell]

7. My experience seems to be somewhat opposite to that of ​@waclawek.jan’s.  I started my career with an RTOS in a hard real-time environment and the skills learned there informed my design and implementation approaches in both bare-metal and RTOS-based projects throughout my career.  An RTOS (generally) gives you a good foundation on which to build an application, allowing you to focus on the abstraction and data models.  A similar foundation ends up being needed in a bare-metal app of any non-trivial sophistication but you get the fun of “rolling your own”.   Looking back I think I’ve been pretty effective in both RTOS-based and bare-metal environments, with my preference leaning heavily towards using an RTOS unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise.

[waclawek.jan]

[double post due to technical issues, can’t erase]

[Andrew Neil]

 

[LCE]

100% agree to Jan, esp. there are no shortcuts - as with most things in real life.

 

And now for something completely different:

do not rest on embedded SW, learn hardware.

Over the last 15..20 years I found that too many EEs coming from college / university have become rather programmers than “circuit designers”.
And many even lacking the skills to understand the basics of how to “connect” a microcontroller / SOC / whatever and its interaction with the real world.

[Andrew Neil]

do not rest on embedded SW, learn hardware.

Absolutely!

 

​@Anderson_EEE - Embedded soft/firmware doesn’t live in isolation from the hardware - it is intimately connected.

Back to your “beginners problems” question, a common one seen all too often here is people who look only at their code when facing a problem, and never consider the hardware.

You need to be able to use multimeters, oscilloscopes, logic analysers, etc - and know how & when to apply them.

• When your LED doesn’t blink, it’s no use looking at the code if the LED is wired backwards!
• When your I2C doesn’t work, it’s no use looking at the code if the pullups are wrong or missing!
• etc, etc, ...

[Andrew Neil]

I recently decided to learn the STM32 NUCLEO-F303RE

Don’t focus too narrowly - think about transferrable skills rather than specific part numbers 

 

In what order should I learn the peripherals (GPIO, Timers, PWM, ADC, UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, DMA, etc.)?

As suggested here, 

1. GPIO first - that’s your “Blinky” LED flashing
2. UART next - having working UART is invaluable for debugging, diagnostics, configuration, etc ...

After that, it’s pretty much down to what you need for your particular projects/interests.

 

What common mistakes do beginners make

Trying to do everything all at once!

Start simple; build step-by-step

 

 

[Andrew Neil]

aspiring to build my career in the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry

Note that there are no automotive-qualified STM32s; eg, see:

​@Peter BENSCH 

 

Here is ST’s Automotive microcontroller range: https://www.st.com/en/automotive-microcontrollers.html

 

[Pavel A.]

 

> At what stage should I start learning FreeRTOS?

Again, as ​@LCE wrote - don’t let the software to distract you. Software was fascinating just few years ago - languages, RTOSes, funny coding habits. This is no longer now, AI is completely erasing the software business. 

You may have noticed that AI tools are already capable of downloading the programs that they built to target devices, running and collecting feedback via attached instruments, UART output and so on. Based on results, change the code, repeat. 

So you can build a setup with a MCU board. instruct the AI agent to write and run a bunch of tests and present results in a nice graph or table. All in plain language, no coding. Invest your time in mastering these tools.

 

[waclawek.jan]

So you can build a setup with a MCU board. instruct the AI agent to write and run a bunch of tests and present results in a nice graph or table. All in plain language, no coding. Invest your time in mastering these tools.

 

I wonder how will this pan out.

JW

[mƎALLEm]

Like others said, Embedded systems engineer needs to have software and hardware skills. That’s a must.

What is the best learning roadmap from beginner to advanced for the STM32 NUCLEO-F303RE?

→ You should not make “NUCLEO-F303RE” as a goal. Start step by step: read documentation: reference manual, datasheet, errata sheet (many developers are missing this document). Start by toggling a LED. Start by using CubeMx, HAL and see how the generated code by CubeMX was implemented. You can also check the implementation of the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) and see how it was implemented by referring to the reference manual to understand the initialization basics. 

In what order should I learn the peripherals (GPIO, Timers, PWM, ADC, UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, DMA, etc.)?

→ There is no specific order. Some start by printing “Hello World” using printf, others start by toggling a LED, getting buttons values from GPIOs etc ... Many examples are provided by CubeHAL for STM32F3 family over this link: https://github.com/STMicroelectronics/STM32CubeF3/tree/master/Projects

and specifically for STM32F303RE-Nucleo board: https://github.com/STMicroelectronics/STM32CubeF3/tree/master/Projects/STM32F303RE-Nucleo

Which official documents should I read first (User Manual, Datasheet, Reference Manual, Application Notes)?

→ You should definitely read the reference manual RM0316 not all the sections. The starting point sections you must read are RCC, Flash, GPIO, Power control, System and memory overview.

The datasheet DS9118 of the product are must read + the errata sheet: ES0261

But specifically in your case you need also to refer to the user manual of the board: UM1724  and its schematic: here.

For application notes: 

If you will design your custom board you should refer to these application notes:

AN4206 “Getting started with STM32F3 series hardware development” 

AN2867 “Guidelines for oscillator design on STM8AF/AL/S and STM32 MCUs/MPUs”

If you intend to use the ST bootloader, you must refer to this application note:

AN2606 “Introduction to system memory boot mode on STM32 MCUs”

Which concepts should I understand deeply versus those that can be learned later?

→ That depends on what you have learnt already. As said already, you need to have hardware: electrical and electronic skills for hardware and programming skills for software developement.

Are there any recommended books, courses, YouTube channels, or ST application notes that you consider essential?

→ Not specifically to this board or this product. Need to refer to ST Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnmZw3h4XnpK3e5D2jvIGA

There are also some articles and wikis, provided by ST. You need to do search.

At what stage should I start learning FreeRTOS?

→ That depends on your knowledge. You need first to understand how RTOS works not specifically FreeRTOS. They all almost work in the same way. If you find “MicroC/OS-II: The Real Time Kernel” book of Jean Jacques Labrosse, I think Chapter 2 “Realtime Systems Concepts”, it’s a good starting point on how RTOS works. You can after use any RTOS: FreeRTOS, UCOS, etc ..

What common mistakes do beginners make while learning STM32, and how can I avoid them?

→ Definitely the most common mistake is to not reading the documentation before asking.  Reading the documentation is a must. Everyone need to start debugging and to rack his brain a bit before asking. We see many users in the community they run to ask a question just facing an issue without doing basic debugging/analysis or doing a search on google.

You can also ask STM32 Side Kick (AI helper) which appears at the bottom right of the screen.

 

Hope that helps.

[Andrew Neil]

Specifically for ST products - including STM32 microcontrollers - your key point of reference is the Product Page; eg, for the STM32F303RE:

https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f303re.html

• Look on the Documentation tab for the datasheet, reference manual, application notes, etc
• The CAD Resources tab for schematics, symbols, etc
• The Tools & Software tab for supporting hardware (dev boards, etc) and software tools.

 

Similarly for the NUCLEO-F303RE board:

https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/nucleo-f303re.html