Electronic – STM32 ARM header files for use with Eclipse and GCC

armcompilerembedded

I'm a mechatronics (mechanical and electrical) engineering student and want to learn how to program ARM microprocessors. I've used Atmel ATMegas previously. I'm using a mac and being a student I don't want to use expensive software so I've installed eclipse, Yagarto and openocd as per this blog post. What I want to know though, is where do I get header files for individual chips, as I want to program in C not assembly?.

I'm planning on using STM32 chips as these and NXP's LPC chips seem to be the most popular and STM32 chips seem to be more advanced. I've found that there are some header files when they are part of development boards such as for the STM32F103RBT6 when part of STM32-H103 from Olimex but I can't seem to find header files for other chips in the same family.

A secondary question is, are there any tutorials for C programming of STM32 chips or Cortex-M based chips? I can't seem to find any tutorials that go through the basics such as blinking an LED.

Best Answer

A good book that introduces Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers is "The definitve guide to the ARM Cortex-M3, Second Edition" written by Joseph Yiu. It contains both hardware and software explanations.

There's a software interface standard for Cortex-M processors that is called CMSIS (Cortex Microcontroller Interface Software). You can download standard pheripherals librairies from the microcontroller's manufacturer website which contains the CMSIS header files and source files.

You will also need a startup code to initialize your microcontroller before executing the main loop. It is usually provided by the IDE but I don't know if there's Eclipse packages that can do the job for you.

Related Solutions

Electronic – How to use a build server with Keil uVision4 (MDK-ARM), script a build, use a makefile

This is the best method I have come up with recently:

In the build options, select create batch file.

When you initiate a build from the IDE, a batch file along with several text files are created based on the options set in the IDE. You need to track these IDE generated files in source control:

*.bat
*.ini
*.__i
*._ia
*.lnp
*.sct

Then foo.bat can be launched from a build script.

While this does create extra files that need to tracked in source control if you want to build reliably from the generated batch file, it does remove the need to rely on the Keil project file (foo.uvproj) and the IDE. I find it easier to compare differences, and thus track changes, to the generated text files (*.__i) that contain compiler flags than to the .uvproj file. Additionally, the batch file calls the various tools, armasm, armcc, armlink, directly. This gives you the direct output of each of those steps as well as a seemingly better potential for migrating a project to a different tool chain in the future if necessary.

I realize this answer sounds a lot like my original question, but I genuinely don't know of a better way of running a scripted build with Keil's tools. I asked to see what might come up from others. I don't completely disagree with the answer from @digikata, but I prefer to have compiler flags and the memory map in an easier format for tracking and to use more unix-style tools for compilation rather than launching an all-in-one compilation with the IDE. I think the all-in-one compilation from the IDE works well at my workstation, but not for the build server.

EDIT: The build server runs on Windows Server 2003. I must confess that I have relented to using the IDE command line interface rather than a batch file. This just became too difficult to manage.

Electronic – Program only runs when debugging in GDB – using Open OCD and Olimex arm-usb-ocd-h jtag to program at91sam3su

$ telnet localhost 4444
> halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mod
xPSR: 0x81000000 pc: 0x00080107 msp: 0x20000598
> flash write_image blinky/blinky.elf

You usually need reset init before a flash erase/write, halt may not be enough. In gdb it is monitor reset init.

The flash also needs to be erased before writing: flash write_image erase unlock blinky/blinky.elf

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Electronic – How to use a build server with Keil uVision4 (MDK-ARM), script a build, use a makefile

Electronic – Program only runs when debugging in GDB – using Open OCD and Olimex arm-usb-ocd-h jtag to program at91sam3su

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