Flashing on a Target Board

So, you wrote your driver and then compiled it: now want to run it on a STM32 microcontroller. To do this, there are several ways, depending on your board's configuration.

Method 1: USB

If you are using a Discover board, you can directly plug your board to your PC with a USB cable. You will need some drivers that are available one the vendor's site. Once the PC has recognized tour board, you have two options.

1.1 Drag and Drop

Some boards support drag and drop: simply select your .bin file and drop it into the device.

1.2 ST-Link software

If this doesn't work, you can try downloading an ST-Link utility, which is provided with a GUI. You will need to press Connect, flash your binary, verify it and then power cycle the board.

Windows

Simply install the ST-Link Utility.

Linux

STLink (Recommended)

This is a command line tool.
Here you find a guide on how to install it. For Ubuntu you can simply do:

sudo apt install stlink-tools

And in order to flash your board:

st-flash write <path-to-binary> <flash-origin-address>

QSTLink2

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fpoussin/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qstlink2
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mobyfab/QStlink2/master/res/49-stlinkv2.rules
sudo mv 49-stlinkv2.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
sudo chown root:root /etc/udev/rules.d/49-stlinkv2.rules

Method 2: USART

If your board has at least a USART port accessible, you can also flash binaries through it. To do this, you'll need a USB-TTL module and you need to have access to the following pins of your STM32:

• BOOT0
• BOOT1
• NRST
• USART RX
• USART TX

You also need stm32flash installed.

Procedure

1. Connect BOOT0 to VDD and BOOT1 to GND
2. Reset the board by pulling NRST to GND and then leave it floating
3. try stm32flash /dev/ttyUSB0 or ttyS0
4. if the board information is printed, flash with stm32flash -b <BAUDRATE> -w <BINARYNAME> /dev/ttyUSB0 or whatever device the USB-TTL is attached.
5. once finished, restore BOOT0 and BOOT1 values and reset the board.