Unable to get a working Blinky

MEwen.1 · ‎2020-02-17

Folks, I have fallen at the first hurdle. I bought a Nucleo-H743Z12, and when it arrived, I checked the jumpers according to the instructions, and plugged it into USB. It lit up its LEDs and performed as expected : The Usr button changed the LED display (3 displays) and the Reset button reset the program.

Following the Digi-key instructions on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZS2p1tW-g, and using CubeIDE, I wrote my first blinky, and compiled it without error ...

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12:01:32 **** Incremental Build of configuration Debug for project Nucleo-H743Z-blinky ****

make -j4 all

arm-none-eabi-size Nucleo-H743Z-blinky.elf

text data bss dec hex filename

13328 24 1840 15192 3b58 Nucleo-H743Z-blinky.elf

Finished building: default.size.stdout

12:01:34 Build Finished. 0 errors, 0 warnings. (took 2s.474ms)

=====================

... but when I tried to run it (using Run/Debug as/STM32 Cortex-M C/C++ application), I got an error, saying that the ST-Link needed upgrading. I found the instructions for that and upgraded it - it seemed to go well - and tried to re-compile my sketch (it was still OK) and run it, but I get a dialogue saying ...

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Launching Nucleo-H743-blinky Debug has encountered a problem.

Error in final launch sequence:

Error launching GDB server. Session terminated

Details>>>

=====================

... and when I click Details, it says ...

Error in final launch sequence:

Error launching GDB server. Session terminated

At 13:05 in the video, "When asked, click 'Switch' to open a new perspective" - I never get that - I can't get that far through the procedure.

It seems that it has tried to load a sketch, because the pre-installed one doesn't work any more, so I guess it has been overwritten.

I have tried several times to get it working, and along the way, I have also had errors indicating a DLL problem and USB connection problems, though I am able to read the two files on the card without error (a .TXT file showing "Version: 0221; Build: Aug 23 2019 16:25:00" and an HTML file which seems also seems intact)

LD4, next to the USB socket, is sometimes red, sometimes green, but I don't know what changes it. Whether it is red or green, I have been able to read the afore-mentioned files, so the USB seems OK.

What's my best course of action?

waclawek.jan · ‎2020-02-17

This is the classical probem with all modern shiny clicky tools - when they work they're great, when they break it's dead end. You'll have the same later with Cube...

Tried to search here? Can't it be https://community.st.com/s/question/0D50X0000C20cXYSQY/how-to-set-up-debugging-for-neucleo64-board-in-stm32cubeide ?

JW

MEwen.1 · ‎2020-02-17

No, I hadn't seen that. I'll work through it tomorrow, so wish me luck!

And thanks for the encouragement for my future with Cube. 😉

Piranha · ‎2020-02-18

Unfortunately with this approach one learns almost nothing, only how to "click" a blinky of a size of 15 KB.

For real learning look here: https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/453.php

Piranha · ‎2020-02-18

I can "encourage" even more - with Cube it's impossible to make non-trivial quality firmware. Not only USB and Ethernet is full of bugs, but a much simpler UART is crippled and... even the trivial GPIO toggle is flawed and ST's HAL team is mentally incapable of understanding that!

MEwen.1 · ‎2020-02-18

Oh, joy! I'm in for some high times!

MEwen.1 · ‎2020-02-18

Thanks Piranha, At this point, I'm not trying to learn anything - I'm just trying to get the damn thing working. No point trying to go racing if the car won't start!

Aha! In the middle of writing to you, I followed the link given by waclawek.jan above, and found the advice to use OpenOCD instead of GDB, and my Blinky works now. So now, I have to start figuring out the SPI and DMA. If I'm not back in a month or two, send a search party.