STM32 where to start?

[bikeNomad]

I looked at mbed five years ago , was there not a big catch that you needed some special bootloader or something?

Most boards supported by mbed have a debug chip on them that connects to the SWD and UART pins of the target microcontroller and provides drag-and-drop programming (it appears as a storage device), serial interface (USB CDC device) and the debug interface.

Because of this there is no bootloader required.

You can use most of the mbed-enabled boards as a debugger. For instance, the STM32 Nucleo boards allow you to connect to an external target device for programming and debugging.

But the mbed library itself does not require the debug chip, and there is support for several boards that don't have one.

Many people use an mbed-enabled board as a debug interface to their own boards. We've done this on a number of projects.

You could use another debug interface with mbed (I've also used the SEGGER J-Link for this).

[Kjelt]

Ok then in the meantime this is solved, can't remember why I walked away back then.

[PlainName]

The reason I looked at it and ran away was because it was online only at that time. They may have seen the light since, but they lost this potential user right there.

[bikeNomad]

There are now at least three alternatives to the mbed online compiler:

• The command-line interface. This is a set of Python scripts that create and manage projects, run compilers, flash binaries, etc.
  This also knows how to export to a number of IDEs for ease of debugging and editing (I've often used their exporter to set up Eclipse embedded CDT projects (https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/iot.embed-cdt):
  cces,            cmake_gcc_arm,   codeblocks,      e2studio,
  eclipse_armc5,   eclipse_gcc_arm, eclipse_iar,     embitz,
  gcc_arm,         gnuarmeclipse,   iar,             make_armc5,
  make_armc6,      make_gcc_arm,    make_iar,        mcuxpresso,
  netbeans,        qtcreator,       sw4stm32,        uvision,
  uvision5,        uvision6,        vscode_armc5,    vscode_gcc_arm,
  vscode_iar
• Mbed Studio, their new all-in one IDE https://os.mbed.com/studio
• PlatformIO, a build/debug system that works with many editors and supports mbed as well as a number of other libraries including STMicro's: https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/frameworks/mbed.html

[typematrix]

I am in the same boat,  just getting started with STM32( I have  a lot of experience with other platforms).

Not sure where to start, I purchased  two of those nucleo-32 & nucleo-64  boards.

Is there a good guide or video or blogpost explaining all the different IDE, language  and toolchain options ?

Seems to be quite a bit of choice.

[Karel]

Read this (it's in the same thread!):

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/embedded-computing/stm32-where-to-start/msg2982636/#msg2982636

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Mastering STM32 by Carmine Noviello is pretty good.