How to Implement STM32 into B4R

Revised 15th December 2016

If you want more FLASH memory space (say 128K flash), need more RAM (how about 20K), would
like your program to run a little faster, or simply want to play around with a different micro-
controller family, then have a go at this.

The STM32F103xx series of microcontrollers are manufactured by ST Microelectrinics. There are

many boards/modules available employing one of the many STM32F103 microcontrollers available
in the family. I chose the NUCLEO evaluation boards as the documentation indicated it uses
compatible Arduino pin headers. It is a two in one board. The lower section of the PCB is the STM32
microcontroller evaluation board while the top section is a build-in ST-Link v2.1 programming
interface via a single USB connection.

There are many NUCLEO evaluation boards for STM32 microcontrollers. I chose to implement the
NUCLEO F103RB. This board can be purchased online for about $20 to $30.

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_odkw=ga227911+nucleo&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2
045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xnucleo+f103rbt6.TRS0&_nkw=nucleo+f103rbt6&_sacat=0

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-67145/l/stmicroelectronics-stm32-mcu-nucleo-
boards

Your will need a usb to mini-usb cable to connect it to your PC. The Nucleo board also get power via
this lead.

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_odkw=nucleo+f103rbt6&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p20
45573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xpremium+15ft+usb+2.0+A+male+mini+B+pin+male+plug+leads.TR
S0&_nkw=premium+15ft+usb+2.0+A+male+mini+B+pin+male+plug+leads&_sacat=0

Now you have the hardware lets get going.

Arduino IDE
First ou eed to do load a d i stall Ardui o IDE i i u ersio .6.9 It just o ’t ork o
earlier versions.

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Ok, now we need to run the Arduino IDE development suite. Select from the menu TOOLS/Board
option the sele t the Board Ma ager fro the top of the list.

Once it has updated the list of supported boards, click on the

Ardui o “AM Boards -bit ARM Cortex-M3)

Download/install this board library.

Although this library is not for STM32 microcontrollers, we need it installed to get the ARM compiler
into the Arduino IDE environment.

STM32 Libraries
The STM32 libraries have actually been written/edited/created and maintained by Roger Clarke and
the guys at

http://www.stm32duino.com/

Without their devotion to this Arduino for STM32 proje t, none of this would be possible.

As the “TM li raries are ot a aila le fro ithi Ardui o’s own Board Manager, we need to
download them directly from

https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/Arduino_STM32

Click on the button <CLONE OR DOWNLOAD> then click DOWNLOAD ZIP.

Once the zip file is downloaded onto your PC, go to your MY DOCUMENTS folder. Go into the
Ardui o folder. You ill see a folder li raries a d as ou pro a l do ’t ha e it, create another
folder alled hard are . No ou ha e oth li raries a d hard are folders i the Ardui o
folder.

Now go into that hard are folder. Extract the contents of the downloaded zip and paste it into
this hardware folder. You should see a si gle folder Arduino_STM32master . All the li raries are
inside it. Now rename this folder to just Ardui o_STM . Do ’t eed the aster suffi .

ST-Link Drivers
You need to download and install the ST-Link drivers. The drivers provide communication between
the PC and the ST-Link programmer built onto the top section of the NUCLEO evaluation board. Click
on this link.

https://developer.mbed.org/teams/ST/wiki/ST-Link-Driver
Follow the instructions, li k the ora ge te t Download the latest ST-Link v2 driver . This takes ou
to STSW-LINK009 web page. Go down the page to the section titled GET SOFTWARE. This section
shows a table containing Part Number STSW-LINK 9, o e to the right olu la elled Order
fro “T a d li k o the utto Get “oft are . You ill eed to ACCEPT the terms and conditions
then you progress to the GET SOFTWARE web page. You can chose to create a new Registration or
fill i our a e a d e ail address to just do load the dri er. Cli ki g the utto DOWNLOAD
sends a request to ST. They will send you an email containing the actual download link for the driver
archive file. This may take several minutes (yeh right) to receive the email from ST.

The downloaded archive file contains two installers.

dpinst_amd64.exe for 64bit windows and

dpinst_x86.exe for 32bit windows.

Install the right one for your PC.

Now when you connect the Nucleo evaluation board to the PC with the USB cable you should get
two devices show up on your PC.

First, a new drive called Nucleo_F103RB ill e ou ted i our PC’s dri e list, and

Secondly, a virtual serial Comm Port. (for me it came up as Com3)

In fact a third device is also created to facilitate the programming of the Nucleo board via the USB.
For now we will consider it as just “T-Li k programmer.

The drive is not reall useful for us. It is used “T’s o MBED de elop e t suite for draggi g
and dropping the output BIN file onto. It is then automatically uploaded into the microcontroller and
run.

The virtual serial com port is an extention of the second hardware serial port (USART:1) of the
microcontroller. From the B4R environment we consider this as another PC com port.

ST-Link Utility
A soft are tool alled “T-Li k Utilit is also a aila le fro “T. It a o e t, o u i ate a d
program the Nucleo board. Although it is not required for using B4R with STM32 I did end up
installing it.

I had trouble getting the ST-Link to be seen by the Arduino IDE. I used the “T-Link/Update-
Fir are menu option of the “T-Li k Utilit to do just that. This see ed to get thing talking.

Click here to download it.

http://stm32-st-link-utility.software.informer.com/download/

ST-Link Utility is also a great tool for just debugging the connecti it of thi gs. It’s useful to ha e.
Changes to STM32 Library
As the STM32 microcontrollers have different and extended features over the usual UNO (avr)
microcontrollers, the STM32 libraries have been adapted to best suit the requirements of a coder.
This means that it is 100% compatible with the Arduino IDE environment, but 95% compatible with
e isti g proje t’s C sour e ode. B R ge erates a o pati le INO proje t hi h it passes to the
Ardui o Builder . Ardui o Builder the o piles it a d the resultant BIN output file (not HEX) is
then uploaded to the microcontroller board.

This 95% compatibility causes issues (compile errors) for B4R. As such, some minor changes need to
be made to the STM32 library source files. Remember, we installed these earlier in
..//My Documents/Arduino/hardware/

-------------------Change 1----------------------------------------------

Added the following to lines to the STM32 file:

..//Arduino_STM32/STM32/STM32F1/cores/maple/print.h

Place them with the other similar lines within the PRINT class.

size_t print(const Printable&);

size_t println(const Printable&);

Also added this line to the top of the same file:

#include "printable.h"

NB: The "Printable.h" file is already in the maple folder just not included.

-------------------Change 2------------------------------------------------

To get the Serial class and LOG display operational in B4R, I needed to swap the Hardware
Serial ports used for the "SERIAL" and "SERIAL1" objects. The STM32F103RB has 3 hardware
serial ports on the chip. The lines to be changed are defined right at the end this file.
..//Arduino_STM32/STM32/STM32F1/variants/nucleo_f103rb/board.cpp

It now looks like this.

#else
//DEFINE_HWSERIAL(Serial, 3);// Use HW Serial 2 as "Serial"
DEFINE_HWSERIAL(Serial, 2); // changed for B4R
//DEFINE_HWSERIAL(Serial1, 2);
DEFINE_HWSERIAL(Serial1, 3); // changed for B4R
DEFINE_HWSERIAL(Serial2, 1);
#endif

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes to B4R
Some more changes are also required to not just the set up of the B4R environment but also to the
underlying source files used within B4R itself. You need to find the install location of the B4R
application and its libraries. Probably under
..//Program Files/Anywhere Software/B4R/

---------------------Change 3----------------------------------------------

It seems that the STM32 libraries use an enumerated type (WiringPinMode) for the pin
mode value. STM32 supports many more pin modes. In Arduino the pin mode is a numeric
value defined as INPUT, OUTPUT and INPUT_PULLUP. A type mismatch error occurs at
compilation.

To translate the types, I edited the SetMode function in the B4R file.
..//B4R/Libraries/rCore/B4RArduino.cpp

void Pin::setMode(Byte arduino_Mode) {

#ifdef _VARIANT_ARDUINO_STM32_
WiringPinMode stm32_Mode;
switch (arduino_Mode) {
case INPUT:
stm32_Mode = INPUT;
break;
case OUTPUT:
stm32_Mode = OUTPUT;
break;
case INPUT_PULLUP:
stm32_Mode = INPUT_PULLUP;
break;
}
pinMode(PinNumber, stm32_Mode);
#else
pinMode(PinNumber, arduino_Mode);
#endif
if (arduino_Mode == INPUT_PULLUP)
CurrentValue = true;
}

---------------------Change 4----------------------------------------------

You also need to extend the process timeout in B4R so that the compilation results (from
Arduino Builder) get displayed in the compilation dialog box.

Run up B4R. Make the following change to its settings.

 Menu: Tools/IDE-Options/Configure-Process-Timeout

Set it to 45 seconds.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

B4R - Select Board Type

Run up B4R. Select menu TOOLS/BOARD-SELECTOR.

I the Board T pe drop do o it’s a lo g a do the list select

STM Nucleo F103RB (STLink) (device_variant=NucleoF103_HSI)

I the “erial Port drop do o sele t

COMx STMicroelectronics STLink Virtual Com Port

Baud Rate
115200.

Logs
IDE

Click the <OK> button to save these settings.

Ready to Run
If everything has gone to plan you should be ready to compile and run your first B4R project on the
STM32F103RB Nucleo evaluation board. I started with the B4R Blink example. The green test LED
(just below the black reset button) on the Nucleo board is connected to Arduino pin 13. The output
to the LOG window will also display fine.

Good Luck and have fun.

Other STM32 F103 boards

I have also been implementing other STM32 F103 boards for programming from B4R with
reasonable success. Both of the boards below are STM32F103C8T6 and sell for about $6 each.
Similar specs to the NUCLEO F103RB board but they require either a separate ST-LINK programmer
dongle or they can be programmed using a serial link such as a FTDI1232 USB to serial module.

I hope to publish additional information for these boards at a later time.

Known Issues
Although everything I have tested so far seems to work fine, other changes may still need to be
made as further libraries, classes and hardware support are confirmed.

I have only made changes to support the STM32F1 series. The Arduino_STM32 libraries appear to
support the other microcontrollers in the ST family. F3 and F4 devices are even more powerful
should others want to play around getting them going.

My only outstanding issue at this time is that compiling a B4R project for STM32 creates a very large
output BIN file. Around 70K. Even if it is a small (or nothing) project. This is not a problem for the
Nucleo F103RB evaluation board as it supports 128K of Flash memory. Still plenty of room for play.
In the case of the STM32F103C8T6 boards described above it is a bit tricky. The F103C8 is only a 64K
flash device so the B4R output BIN file never fits (or does it). On the www.stm32duino.com forum
they discuss that the F103C8 devices (although rated 64K) usually contain 128K flash anyway (all
manufactured from the same silicon die). My testing together with others on the forum have
confirmed this fact. So, the fix is to declare the device as a F103CB type being 128K flash, then the
BIN file uploads and executes fine.

I broke down the INO project generated by B4R to determine the actual cause of this over size BIN
file. If I make a simple blink project in C in the Arduino IDE it is only 5K in size. The difference is that
the B4R inside its core C source code uses class instantiation to manage the PollerNode list as well as
many other class structures. The NEW operator used to declare an object of a class, adds about 64K.
Oddly, if I compile to Arduino UNO its output memory requirement is only 5K (class instantiation
only adds about 600 bytes). The problem is not B4R. The guys at www.stm32duino.com indicated its
caused by the inclusion of a great deal of support code once a classs instantiation is required (even
when the class itself is empty). I reall do ’t u dersta d this. My knowledge of C is limited so I have
chosen to moved on as it works anyway.

General References and Resources

Arduino for STM32 – Developers forum

http://www.stm32duino.com/

Roger Clarke’s Gut hu Ardui o_“TM li raries

https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/Arduino_STM32

STM32F103RB Nucleo – User Manual

http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/user_manual/98/2e/fa/4b/e
0/82/43/b7/DM00105823.pdf/files/DM00105823.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.DM00105
823.pdf

STM32F103RB microcontroller – Data Sheet

http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/datasheet/33/d4/6f/1d/df/0
b/4c/6d/CD00161566.pdf/files/CD00161566.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00161566.p
df
ST-Link Utility User Manual

http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/user_manual/e6/10/d8/80/
d6/1d/4a/f2/CD00262073.pdf/files/CD00262073.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD002620
73.pdf

YouTube - Setup Arduino IDE for STM32

https://youtu.be/-zwGnytGT8M

YouTube - First LED Blink STM32 via Arduino

https://youtu.be/Ze6q6NidS5w

WebPage - STM32F103C8T6 Programming with ST-Link v2

https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/Arduino_STM32/wiki/Programming-an-
STM32F103XXX-with-a-generic-%22ST-Link-V2%22-programmer-from-Linux

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