Need Guide lines to start

[angela15sruthi]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 06:32

Hello all,

Am new to this controller and i have F0-discovery kit with. In the data brief preliminary document of the kit it is mentioned as follows: 2           Development toolchains â—�       Altium TASKINGâ„¢ VX-Toolset â—�       Atollic TrueSTUDIO® â—�       IAR, EWARM â—�       Keilâ„¢, MDK-ARM Can any one please suggest which is the best tool to start? and any help documents or application notes (if any to start). Any other suggestions from the experts are most welcome . I am awaiting for a better future with this controller. Thanks!!!!!!good day :) NOTE: please reply asap. I am sorry to say that the STM customer support is worst and i didnt get any reply from them, almost a week am waiting for the reply. I have the kits and tools. But waiting for the reply to start.

[frankmeyer9]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 11:49

�?       Altium TASKING™ VX-Toolset

�?       Atollic TrueSTUDIO® �?       IAR, EWARM �?       Keil™, MDK-ARM That depends on personal preferences. These are basically the commercial products which are the first to implement support for a controller, the stm32F0 in your case. There are free version of them, mostly restricted to 32k. If you had worked with one of this toolchains before, stick to it. You want to evaluate the stm32f0, not one of those toolchains. If not, just download the free versions and try. Atollic, for instance, is Eclipse based. The other ones are ''roll your own'' IDE's. I never tried the Altium toolchain, and hardly found any reference here in this forum.I am sorry to say that the STM customer support is worst and i didnt get any reply from them, almost a week am waiting for the reply. I have the kits and tools. But waiting for the reply to start. I can't confirm that. At least for commercial customers the ST support is not 'worse' than others. As private user, you can hardly expect a full service for free.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 13:50

If you are not yet qualified to make the IDE choice, pick one (Keil), and get further up the learning curve where you have the knowledge/experience to make the choice which best meets YOUR needs.

ST maintains a list of consultants and training firms. If you need these services, start there, ST is not going to technically staff your project, and FAE will be available to commercial clients with viable projects. Support engineers are generally not interested in reading technical documentation to you, you need to read and digest the resources on ST's and ARM's web sites and the internet in general via Google,etc yourself. For info on getting started, try the page for your board/part and the design support tab.

http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/253215.jsp

UM1523: Getting started with software and firmware environments for the STM32F0DISCOVERY kit

http://www.st.com/internet/com/TECHNICAL_RESOURCES/TECHNICAL_LITERATURE/USER_MANUAL/DM00049929.pdf

Need some information on the Cortex-M0 core, you could review ARM's manuals, and get Joseph Yiu's book on the chip.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Definitive-Guide-ARM-Cortex-M0/dp/0123854776

[angela15sruthi]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 14:33 clive1, Thank you so much for the comments. That was helpful. and i started going through the documents already.  am a newbie i just wanted to get confirmed from the ST experts as i was confused in choosing IDE. I wanted to make a good start. I must appreciate that the documents are so good. The support engineers dont need to read and i dont want that too. Its their controller and they should help the beginners to make a good start with the controller. Theirs nothing wrong in sharing their opinions

[angela15sruthi]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 14:35

Hi fm,

Thank you so much for sharing your opinion :) Its a nice controller and board to start with. I dont know what do you mean by commercial customers (does it mean that they are partial or biased?) still am not satisfied -sruthi

[adnen_speder]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 15:06Look at this web site : 

http://en.radzio.dxp.pl/stm32vldiscovery/

contain 9 Lesson to start with STM32 product 

Lesson 1 - First program. Blinking LED

  Lesson 2 - Reading the Button

  Lesson 3 - Blinking LED with timer  Lesson 4 - Blinking LED with timer interrupts  Lesson 5 - Blinking LED with timer hardware  Lesson 6 - Pulse width modulation (PWM)  Lesson 7 - Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)  Lesson 8 - Simple communication with USART  Lesson 9 - ADC with Direct Memory Access

[frankmeyer9]

Posted on May 21, 2012 at 15:42

> I dont know what do you mean by commercial customers

If you use, or want to use, a STM32 controller for a project in your company (if you work for any...), you are a commercial customer to ST. If you bought this discovery board out of private interest, and for yourself, you are a private customer. That aside, it seems your problem is more that of a newbie to embedded development in general, than ST-related. ST will hardly offer free 'Getting Started with Embedded' courses, and neither will ST's competitors. That is something you need to do, and such a forum is a good starting point.

[lastsamurai]

Posted on June 11, 2012 at 08:31

As far as my understanding, it'd be much easier to stick with ST's peripheral library examples, rather than the third party how-to s.  Anyway, it is a personal preference. ST's library is not awesomely written, but it is easy to learn and read, as the API calls are in plain English ;)

Good luck.

[jlchoobs]

Posted on June 14, 2012 at 08:06

I would suggest Altollic Lite - seems easiest to start with.

Keil - may work sometimes - butr is a PAIN to Debug - their own Headers Lib so you have to buy their product :(= Code Sourcery - is a pain with plugins etc. Try this for Docs:

http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/252419.jsp

The Firmware download provides an assortment of examples. You can get some good advice like from sam and clive. But, don't expect to get a lot from this forum. I have seen a lot friendlier Forums than this - who go out of their way to give you answers and code. But many of the members here prefer sending you in circles with nonsense. While, actually getting the help or answers that you need is like pulling teeth (probably because they don't know the answers anyway - and don't want to admit it). There are even a couple trouble makers - who like complimenting each other like ren-and-stimpy - and harass the rest of us serious people on here. -Notice the nonsense lecture about ''you can hardly expect a full service for free'' - for example ? - he likes lecturing (but nothing useful) and selling something - don't know what or for whom though ... He posted some long messages and sarcasm on this forum  on why people should NOT help other people - I think he is a kid who wants to be a car salesman when he grows up.

[jlchoobs]

Posted on June 14, 2012 at 09:40

Look  to FM's more direct comments:

fm: ''This is NOT a public forum, so stop complaining.'' Topic: Stm32 on Code Sourcery : fm: ''How about looking for another user forum ? Why do you expect detailed expertise about that here ? Ever heard the expression, 'beggars can't be choosers'...? I am happy to refund double the price you paid for my advice...'' Commenting on his own comments: fm: ''don't feed the troll'' (himself) Commenting on his Not respectable posts on the forum: fm: ''As a matter of fact, even advanced technological capabilities are not necessarily accompanied by corresponding interhuman communication skills.'' Thank you fm for those helpful comments for us. ps - him and stimpy complemented each other with useful advice marks - only for comments like these.