Hello, I am new to ST micro, and was wondering if any one can tell me what IDE I should be using to program the STM8 series, down loaded the cube, but there is no compiler there.

[KLed1]

I was wondering about that as well. Right now I'm looking for a device that can run at around 5uA which I thought the STM8L would be suited for, but there's another post below this one that asked for help with this exact application that I would have been interested in but I see that it gets ZERO responses. I assume there's no real community here at all supporting this STM8L. Do you have any suggestions for low powered MCU that have a much more open community? Also I chose the STM8L because it was under $1.00 and a STM32L would have been over-budget.

[JHule.1]

The only other manufacturer I have experience with is Microchip, and there IDE has a lot of bugs in it, that's why I was looking at ST but it looks like 8bit for them is an after thought.

[Philipp Krause]

Padauk has µC that can run with that little current (e.g. the PMS150) and are also very, very cheap. Like the STM8, they are also supported by SDCC.

However, the community there is even smaller than the STM8L one (at least ST has some kind of forum here, though AFAIR the previous forum was more active, even though it often had technical problems; the smaller Padauk community is fragmented and mostly found on the eevblog forums and the German mikrocontroller.net forum - the latter also has STM8 users, so if you speak German, you could also ask your STM8L question there).

P.S.: Since sleep vs. run current was mentioned: The PMS150 uses 6 µA when running at 3.3V and 21 kHz, price is about 0.03€. Still, since community size and activity matters to you: The STM8 has a larger community than Padauk. And even though the STM8 community seems to tend more towards STM8S than STM8L, the STM8L community is still bigger than the Padauk one.

[Ozone]

> ... but there's another post below this one that asked for help with this exact application that I would have been interested in but I see that it gets ZERO responses.

As mentioned, I worked on a commercial project involving a STM8 several years ago. Commercial users are less likely to share, for several reasons.

And apart from the price of STM8 Discovery board, I see no incentive for enthusiasts, especially regarding software support.

> Right now I'm looking for a device that can run at around 5uA ...

Sleep/standby current or runtime ? I suppose the former.

The STM32F0 series could serve this purpose as well, at lower prices then L0.

Considering a 8-bit MCU implies low performance requirements, and limited pincount. Other vendors have good M0 lines, too. The TI MSP430 has quite good software and community support as well.

> I chose the STM8L because it was under $1.00 and a STM32L would have been over-budget.

Do you mean unit prices ? For 1k/10k orders, prices use to be far below, not only with ST.

[Ozone]

Uhhh, I had been working with the old and the new MPLab IDE & PIC16/18 in a former company.

And I'm glad I got out of this ...

[Philipp Krause]

Considering 8-Bit devices, the STM8 is among those with the best tools available. Both considering free and non-free tools:

On the non-free side you have the industry-standard IAR; also Cosmic, which AFAIk integrates well into STVD.

There also is non-free Raisonance, but they have been far behind the other compilers in nearly every way, and haven't even updated their STM8 compiler in years. It still is best when it comes to code size though.

On the free side you have SDCC, a compiler supporting current C standards and generating really good code.

If you want better tool support than the STM8 has, I guess the only option is to got to 32-Bit devices, where there is GCC and LLVM.

A while ago I did a comparison of these four compilers for the STM8:

http://www.colecovision.eu/stm8/compilers.shtml

I intend to update it soon using current versions (already redid the experiments for SDCC and IAR, but still need to look at Cosmic).

Here are some preliminary results in benchmark scores (using current SDCC, IAR and Raisonance, but Cosmic from two years ago):

All compilers have been set to maximum standard compliance and strong optimization. Optimizations goals: Code speed, balanced and code size.

[JHule.1]

Thanks