STM have recently announced a brand new visual development package for their STM32 range of embedded devices. I’ve been a fan of STM for some time as they produce excellent and powerful  development boards at very reasonable prices. The recently introduced Nucleo range are very powerful devices costing just under £8 each! Initialising these chips can be a bit of a pain, involving a study of the data sheet to work out timer and peripheral setup values. STM have recognised that problem and developed the STM32Cube MX as a free solution.

This standalone, free, software package helps you set up all the peripherals in a visual format. This includes all the communication port options as well as the clock chain. The visual clock programming is a real breakthrough as the software provides a simple block diagram of all the clocks showing how they interact. Once you’ve set-up the interfaces and clocks, the Cube MX software generates C code that you can use as the foundation for your project. This is a real boon as not only does it save time but it ensures that you have optimised setup code.

The STM32Cube MX sofware can be downloaded from here.