STM32 Driving A PCIe Video Card

October 8, 2012 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

[Gpuhackr] chose his username to explain exactly how he spends his time. For instance, here he’s using an STM32 Discovery board to drive an AMD Radeon HD 2400 graphics card. The ARM microcontroller isn’t actually using the PCIe interface on the card. Instead, [Gpuhackr] has patched into the debugging interface built into the card itself. This isn’t quite as straight forward as it sounds, but if you do the wiring carefully it’s a pretty intersting way to connect an ARM to an LCD monitor.

This project would be almost impossible if it weren’t for the open source code which AMD has released. This lets him implement the card’s 3D rendering features. The demo directly programs the UVD Xtensa CPU which is on the video card. It draws a cube with color gradients on each side. The cube spins while the debug information is overlaid on the screen. In this case the ARM chip/board is really being used as a programmer to upload some custom firmware. But we think a real code-ninja could implement a communications protocol to open up a simple way to drive the card in real-time.

[Thanks uMinded]

STM32 F4 Discovery Tutorial Using Open Source Tools

September 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[Pulko Mandy] got his hands on the new STM32 F3 Discovery board. He’s a fan of the open source tools just like we are, so he posted a guide covering the use of an open source toolchain with the F3 hardware.

This board was just announced earlier this month but there is already support for it in OpenOCD. It’s not all that different from the F4 board, which we would think made the process a bit easier. [Pulko] is using the Sourcery CodeBench Lite toolchain, which works for pretty much all of the ARM chips out there. It is GCC based and comes with GDB for debugging (along with all the other tools you would expect). He did created his own Linker script and startup code. These are crucial for ARM so it’s nice that he provided them for us. He finishes up the guide by showing how OpenOCD can be used to flash the code to the chip and how it works with the debugger.

[Photo source]

Template For Building STM32F0-Discovery Project In GCC

June 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Yep, that blue light is blinking and I made it happen. I’ve been hard at work since I got my free STM32F0-Discovery board in the mail. Most recently I put together a starting template for building STM32F05x project on Linux. You’ll still need to install your own tool chain (I’m using the Code Sourcery G++: Lite Edition), but this makes it a snap to compile your projects with support for STM’s peripheral libraries.

As for programming, you may remember that I added support for writing to RAM in the stlink project. I’ve ~~wasted~~ spent a ton of time trying to get support for writing to Flash into that project. It’s just less of a hassle to use stlink than it is to work with OpenOCD. But I’ve really hit a wall getting the flash loader code to work. If you want to check out what I’ve done so far in that area I committed a very messy branch (see the commits for what code changes I’ve made).

In the mean time you can use OpenOCD to write images compiled with the template to your device. I included the ‘make program’ option in the Makefile to do this from command line. If you need help compiling OpenOCD check the readme in the template repository.

Video Review: STM32F0-Discovery Board

May 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

The STM32 Discovery boards are nothing new, we’ve looked at them several times. But the newest sibling in the line might be just the thing to make the leap from your steadfast 8-bit projects. We got our hands on it and recorded a video review.

The STM32F0-Discovery gives you a programmer and ARM Cortex-M0 chip all on one convenient board. The top portion is the ST-Link V2 programmer, and includes jumpers and a programming header which let it easily program off-board chips.

The included microcontroller is an STM32F051R8T6 which includes 64kb of program memory and 8kb of RAM. Coming in at $1.80-3.77 in single units and in a hand-solderable LQFP package this raises an eyebrow for our future projects. It has an 8 MHz internal oscillator with 6x PLL which means you can run at 48 MHz without an external crystal (check out [Kenneth Finnegan’s] PLL primer if you don’t know what this is).

The only thing holding us back is the development environment. ST provides everything you need if you’re on Windows, but we want a Linux friendly solution. We know other Discovery boards have worked under Linux thanks to this project. This uses the same ST-LINK V2 so it should work as well. If you want one of your own head over the ST page to see if they’re still giving away samples. There should be a button labeled “Register for your FREE KIT”.

Versaloon Ported To STM8 And STM32 Discovery Boards

February 6, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Bingo] did some work porting Versaloon for STM8 and STM32 discovery boards. Versaloon is a multiple-architecture programmer that we saw a few weeks back. At its center is an STM32 microprocessor, which greatly simplifies the work necessary to use the two discovery boards instead. Flashing the firmware to the boards will zap the ST-link firmware and [Bingo] doesn’t know of a way to restore that so be warned. This hack is still pretty fresh off the bench, but so far it looks like vsprog and OpenOCD both work just fine with the new hardware.

Czech Discovery Ressurects PS/2 Keyboard

November 8, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 17 Comments

Like us, you probably have piles of old PS/2 keyboards occupying strategic positions in your house and causing all sorts of trouble with the neighbours. As luck would have it, there is a way to put those lazy peripherals to work!

Our friends in the Czech Republic have successfully interfaced a PS/2 keyboard to an STM32 Discovery board (translated), and not a moment too soon—just in time for you to integrate their work into your entries for those juicy contests we told you about (the European one and the North American one).

The project page contains an in-depth walkthrough of how the PS/2 connection talks to the keyboard hardware along with source code and links, more than enough information to get started with a PS/2 keyboard hack on your Discovery application. And why stop at keyboards? Give your old PS/2 mouse a new lease on life, or even hook up your custom game controller to spice up the experience.

Win A Harley In This Design Contest

November 4, 2010 by James Munns 38 Comments

EBVElectronik of Germany is hosting a design contest based around the STM32F microcontroller. They are inviting engineers and inventors to come up with the best general purpose design ideas, with prizes including a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and a 1000 euro Apple voucher. Even better, they are offering a free STM32 Discovery Kit to anyone who enters, just to get them started. Sound too good to be true? Well, there is one catch. As of right now, entrants are limited to:

Any individual or group of individuals, age 18 and over as of the date of entry and located in EMEA (Europe and Middle East and Africa)

Sorry USA. We have to save some love for the international crowd. Do us a favor and let us know what you are planning to build, or if you win any of the prizes!