It's been a while since I've looked at this manufacturer's microcontrollers. The reason was simple: over a fairly long period of time, I haven't been able to install their STM32Cube IDE and MX development system without the installation of these tools crashing miserably.
And then recently, I got caught up in an ad promoting the benefits of the STM32H5. It's true: the amount of FLASH and RAM are interesting, as is the maximum operating speed of this circuit.
So, 'for a laugh', I tried installing the IDE and MX. Unbelievably, the installation went smoothly. I was very surprised. But anyway, let's move on...
I wondered if I would be able to produce the classic 'Hello World', namely the flashing of an LED, in less than an hour. To my surprise again, I was able to do so.
At this point you must be wondering where 'the wolf' is hiding?
Well in the USB my friends!
Yes, STMicroelectronics has abandoned the classic USB management, present in the CubeMX graphic configurator, to replace it with the USBx driver.
And what is this thing? Well, a driver that has to do with Microsoft and Azure, and more specifically Azure RTOS. YES!!!
Isn't that fantastic? Microsoft's mess right inside your microcontroller, and for free!!!
And on the ST page, the little explanation of what it is. Without more explanation than that, by the way. Hmm!!! Setting up a 'gas factory', just to implement a 'small' USB communication? I already had the opportunity to implement the MIDI protocol via USB on a small ST processor with the 'standard STmicro driver', a few years ago, with the initialization carried out by CubeMX. Well, all that is finished.
On the ST Github repository, there is also a little explanation that goes well:
Ah, but no, ST doesn't leave you alone in the desert, they provide a package, which cannot be integrated into CubeMX, to "ease developers' life by reducing efforts, time and cost."
I want well to believe them, but in reality, it means more like 'manage on your own' :
I like it!
It's not today that I'm going to come back to the components of STmicro!!! I think I'll stick with my Chinese RISC-V processors. They're a bit more rugged than the STM32s, but hey, I've already spent a good amount of time working on using the USB port. I don't want to spend months and months on the 'skills upgrade' for the ST microcontrollers...
Well, I still have a blinking LED on my desk, driven by a 250 MHz processor. That's not nothing!
