Generate Basic Code

1. Microcontroller Selection

  • Open STM32CubeMX.

  • Click New Project.

  • Select MCU/MPU Selector if you want to select microcontroller IC number or select Board Selector if you want to select using development board number. For example, STM32F407G-DISC1 from Board Selector or STM32F407VG from MCU/MPU Selector.

  • Select particular microcontroller from list on right side and click Start Project.

    Board Selector

You might be asked to initialize peripheral with their default mode. Click No. But if you want to use default mode, click Yes.

2. Pinout & Configuration

  • Clear default pinouts by pressing Ctrl + P and Enter. This is not recommended as some pins are already used with other peripherals on the board and might cause problems if you use them. But for now, just do as we are not using them.

  • Go to RCC > High Speed Clock (HSE) and select Crystal Ceramic Resonator.

    RCC

  • Go to SYS > Debug and select Serial Wire.

    SW

    Important

    ITM uses SWO. If you use ITM, select Debug option as Trace Asynchronous SW in STM32CubeMX configuration.

Now you can select pins for LED, UART, Timers and many more. But leave them for now.

3. Clock Configuration

  • Specify HCLK (MHx). We prefer to use maximum clock frequency. For example, 168 MHz if using STM32F407VGT6 or 72 MHz if using STM32F103C8.

    Clock

4. Project Manager

4.1. Project

  • Write Project Name.

  • Write Project Location`.

  • Select Toolchanin/IDE. We prefer to choose Makefile. CMake is new in STM32CubeMX. You can use both parallelly without any problem as generating for one tool does not remove other tool. CubeIDE is the best as it has many features and easy to use but it is heavy so we do not use as much.

    Project

4.2. Code Generator

  • Select copy all used libraries in to the project folder.

  • Tick:

    • Generate peripheral initialization as a pair ‘.c/.h’ file per peripheral.

    • Keep user code when regenerating.

    • Delete priviously generated file when not in use.

  • Generate code by clicking GENERATE CODE.

    Code Generator

Navigate to project folder, open it using VSCODE. If you chose Makefile as your toolchain, you would find Makefile` in the project folder. If you chose CMake as your toolchain, you would find CMakeLists.txt in the project folder.

Tip

For practice, generate using both Makefile and CMake.