Electronic – STM32F429 Discovery debug options

armdebuggingispstm32

I recently acquired an STM32F429 Discovery Kit (pictured below). I'm new to the M4 cortex series microcontrollers and ARM in general having only worked with PICs before. I've seen some really nice debugging features of this microcontroller using SWD (serial wire debug) but it seems that this only works if you're using a programmer. Unfortunately I'm not using an SWD/JTAG programmer/debugger like the ST-Link to program the board but rather using the USB cable to do so.

I'd like to find out from users on the forum who have worked with these before what my options for debugging are. I'm going to be working on a Fast Fourier Transform application that uses the LCD screen so more advanced debug techniques like live variable viewing and real time data plotting will be extremely useful. Without the ISP programmer if I want to use printf() statements for debugging purposes in my code will I have to do so by outputting over UART to a terminal application like Putty or using the LCD screen to output test data?

STM32F429 Discovery

Best Answer

I have the same board and the top part actually contains the ST-LINK/V2 debugger/programmer. You can even use it to debug/program other boards by configuring the CN4 jumpers. There's more detail in section 6.3 of the User Manual here. It is extremely powerful and quite straight-forward to use in Atollic TrueSTUDIO or System Workbench.