The Easiest Way to Program a Microcontroller!

Are you interesting in having a microcontroller that uses a lot less power? Today, I’ll introduce you to the STM32 Ultra Low Power - L476RG, which uses 4 times less energy than an Arduino Mega and has a powerful Cortex processor. I will also talk about MBED, which is a C language that works not only on STMicroelectronics processors, but also on NXP and a series of processors that have an ARM nucleus. Lastly, I'll show you an online compiler.

Step 1: STM NUCLEO-L476RG

• STM32L476RGT6 in LQFP64 package

• ARM®32-bit Cortex®-M4 CPU

• Adaptive real-time accelerator

• (ART Accelerator ™) allowing 0-wait state execution

• from Flash memory

• 80 MHz max CPU frequency

• VDD from 1.71 V to 3.6 V

• 1 MB Flash

• 128 KB SRAM

• SPI (3)

• I2C (3)

• USART (3)

• UART (2)

• LPUART (1)

• GPIO (51) with external interrupt capability

• Capacitive sensing with 12 channels

• 12-bit ADC (3) with 16 channels

• 12-bit DAC with 2 channels

More info: https://os.mbed.com/platforms/ST-Nucleo-L476RG/

Step 2: Create an Account

Go to www.mbed.com and create an account. Fill in the registration data.

Click on the captcha, read and accept the terms, and click "Sign up".

Step 3: Log Into It

After registering, check your email and log in to the MBED website

Step 4: Add Board to Compiler

If you already have an MBED card plugged into your computer, it will appear as a thumb drive. Inside it, open the MBED.HTM file in the browser.

Or you can go to os.mbed.com/platforms and choose your board from the list of boards.

On the page of your board, click on "Add to your MBED Compiler"

Step 5: Sample Code

Go to this page with the blink example and click on "Import into Compiler.”

Step 6: Import Example

On the screen that opens, click "Import"

Step 7: To Compile

Click the "Compile" button so that the server compiles the source code into a binary file.

The browser will begin downloading the binary file as soon as the server finishes compiling.

Step 8: Transfer Binary to the Board

To transfer the binary to the card, simply drag or copy and paste the downloaded binary file into the card folder, which will appear as a thumb drive.

Step 9: Blink

Here we have the code. We will include the MBED, set the output digital pin, among other commands.

#include "mbed.h"
 
DigitalOut myled(LED1);
 
int main() {
    while(1) {
        myled = 1; // LED is ON
        wait(0.2); // 200 ms
        myled = 0; // LED is OFF
        wait(1.0); // 1 sec
    }
}

Introduction: The Easiest Way to Program a Microcontroller!