Finally got all (or hopefully most) of the supplies I need to start prototyping a project I have been planning on!! I'll talk more about the project in a different post, but this will be about my experience with the STM32 MCU.
Getting familiar with the STM32 has been a learning curve for me. I have used MCUs before, but only at a high level with the ArduinoIDE. After the recent Qualcomm acquirement of the Arduino company and various changes to the TOS, I decided to move my development for the better.
It took a few weeks of back-to-back studying to get a Hello World (Blink an LED) going, but I just accomplished it with confidence! I can now move forward with my project. Next step is going over the SPI protocol and communicating with other devices with it.
I have been learning more in-depth about libraries, HAL's, bootloaders and the line between using them and bare-metal software, as well as memory register's and playing with them. I also found a comfortable workflow thanks to the advice of users online, using STM32CubeIDE for initial chip layout, then porting it to VSCode+PlatformIO to actually start coding.
It's been a great learning experience (although overwhelming trying to get that initial setup going) and I'm excited for the next steps! I listed some essential resources I've been using at the bottom.
-Thanks for reading, Allen.