8 pulse pin outputs on the STM32F407 (Drive GPIO with basic timer?)

[jlaufer]

Hi, I have an application where I need to send send signals to 8 stepper drivers on my STM32F407 Discovery board. Each stepper driver requires an independent PULSE, DIRECTION, and SLEEP signal. DIRECTION and SLEEP are trivial GPIOs high/low. I have used timers in the past to drive the PULSE pins for these stepper drivers with success.

I am wondering if I can control all 8 independent PULSE pins with a single board. There are 8 timers on the STM32F4 . TIM2, TIM5 TIM9 and TIM14 are General-purpose timers and TIM1 and TIM8 are Advanced-control timers. I am confident I can drive 6 independent PULSE signals with these 6 timers. TIM6 and TIM7 are basic timers without input/output functionality.

Is there is a way to drive two other pins with the basic timers 6 and 7 or is there another way to get up to 8 independent PULSE signals?

[waclawek.jan · Accepted solution]

> There are 8 timers on the STM32F4 .

No, there are more.

How did you get to this number? 

JW

[jlaufer]

You are right. I got this number based on the chapter headers of the reference manual where it lists the type of timer and then in parenthesis the timer numbers that apply to that timer… confusing. Thanks.