Which STM32 peripheral was the hardest for you to learn?

[tomcarry0]

I'm curious about everyone's experience with STM32 development.

Which peripheral gave you the biggest challenge when you were getting started, and what finally helped you understand it?

Examples:

• ADC
• DMA
• Timers/PWM
• UART
• SPI
• I2C
• CAN/FDCAN
• USB
• RTC
• Low-power modes

I'd love to hear your experiences, common mistakes to avoid, and any tutorials or resources that helped you master it.

[waclawek.jan]

> Which peripheral gave you the biggest challenge when you were getting started

How would this matter? And how would this help you or anybody else? The task is clear: get it going.  Who cares it’s hard.

> what finally helped you understand it?

I don’t think I have a thorough understanding of either of them. What understanding I’ve got I achieved the usual way: reading documentation and experimenting.

JW

 

[Amel NASRI]

Hi ​@tomcarry0 ,

As getting started resources, I would recommend the following wiki pages: Getting started with STM32 system peripherals.

-Amel

[Andrew Neil]

common mistakes to avoid

Probably the commonest mistake seen here is failure to understand that you’re not just with dealing software.

ADC, PWM, UART, SPI, I2C, CAN/FDCAN, and USB are all about dealing with real hardware; eg,

• an ADC isn’t going to give the reading you expect if the analogue input signal is not what you think it is
• I2C is not going to work if the pullups are wrong - or missing altogether

So you need to be prepared to develop and debug these things from both hardware and software perspectives together.

You need to be able to understand a hardware schematic as well as a software listing.

 

This particularly applies to Low-power: achieving low power needs attention to both software and hardware design.

 

With the comms interfaces (UART, SPI, I2C, etc), of course, you do need at least a working understanding of the protocol.

A common mistake is trying to do both ends at once.

This is (probably?) a variation of the common beginner’s problem of just trying to do too much all at once - aka jumping in an the deep end.

 

Another common misconception is that ST (or anyone else) is going to provide a complete, ready-to-go, out-of-the-box example for every single possible combination of requirements.

Clearly, this is impossible.

You need to be able to take individual examples, combine them, and tailor them to your specific requirements

[Hal3]

I get the feeling that we are feeding some AI search.

[Mike_ST]

yes

[waclawek.jan]

I won’t mind feeding AI with the correct information.

JW