Bare metal STM32 programming on a quadcopter #Quadcopter #Drone #STM32
Tim Schumacher on timakro.de posts about bare Metal STM32 programming on a Crazepony Mini quadcopter.
Last year I got the Crazepony Mini quadcopter, and just recently I figured out how to program it. I will show my progress in this post, and it will also serve as a getting started guide for programming STM32 microcontrollers. We will build a minimal working example to blink an LED with only the GNU ARM compiler (gcc) and without any library dependencies.
You can get the quadcopter on eBay for around 100 €. It ships with a remote control that wirelessly connects to the drone. Like the drone the remote control has no casing, which I find for the drone looks really good, but unfortunately makes holding the remote control difficult. Both devices have firmware by Crazepony installed for which they published the source on GitHub. They seem to be using the Keil IDE. Although it’s mainly made for educational purpose you can totally fly the quadcopter, and I had fun with it for a while.
The chip on the quadcopter is a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M processor with 64 KiB flash memory. On board are a wireless module, a 3-axis digital compass which detects orientation using the earth’s magnetic field, an altimeter that measures height by air pressure and an accelerometer and gyro sensor combined into one chip. In this post we will be using the LEDs on one of the 4 arms and most importantly the integrated USB to serial bridge to flash our program. You can get the schematic for the quadcopter here.
There are a few ways to flash firmware onto STM32 microcontrollers. You can use one of the debugging interfaces JTAG or Serial Wire Debug (SWD) which also have support for on-chip debugging. Note that SWD despite it’s name does not use the standard serial port of the chip. In fact, using the serial connection also known as UART connection is another and the most basic way to flash the controller. That’s what we will be using.
See the details in the blog post. It is great to be able to hack on these projects!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: The latest on Raspberry Pi RP2350-E9, Bluetooth 6, 4,000 Stars and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
