Bare Metal Series
About the project
This series is all about building bare-metal firmware for a Cortex-M4 STM32 microcontroller, using open source tools and libraries such as GCC and libopencm3. The project will cover everything from blinking an LED, to building a bootloader for performing firmware updates over UART/USB, to building a signed firmware security mechanism that allow only authorised code to run on the device. Stretch goal content includes breaking the security we build, as well as exploring more peripherals, applications, and algorithms in depth.
Prerequisites
You need to have the following installed and properly setup. Ensure that they are available in your path.
When using vscode
You'll want to install some extensions to make development smoother
C/C++Cortex-Debug
Repo setup
# Clone the repo
git clone git@github.com:lowbyteproductions/bare-metal-series.git
cd bare-metal-series
# Initialise the submodules (libopencm3)
git submodule init
git submodule update
# Build libopencm3
cd libopencm3
make
cd ..
# Build the main application firmware
cd app
makeDebuggers
J-Link
The YouTube series makes use of J-Link debugger hardware and JLinkGDBServer for integrating with VS Code's debug functionality.
You can use the "JLink: Debug Application" and "JLink: Attach to active" VSCode tasks to debug your built binaries.
ST-Link
ST-Link is alternative debugger that you can use if you don't have a JLink debugger.
If you're using the same STM32F401RE Nucleo board presented in the YouTube series, ST-Link debugging hardware is already provided on the board (see the Day 0 video's Hardware section).
It's recommended that you install the ST-Link drivers.
You'll also need to install the open source ST-Link debugging tools. The primary application you'll need from that tool-set is stutil. Verify that stutil is available in your path before attempting to use the VSCode ST-Link debugging tasks.
Once your drivers and debugging tools are installed, you can use the "ST-Link: Debug Application" and "ST-Link: Attach active" VSCode tasks to debug your firmware over ST-Link.