Re: STM32F4 Discovery, communication and libraries

[Roy Emmerich <roy.emmerich@gmail.com>]

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for your reply. I'm curious to know how/why you opted for your message not to be archived on this forum?

> Do you have any experience with assembler (any) -- since so much of C
> mapped to the PDP series instruction set (pre/post increment/decrement
> operators, for example).

Unfortunately I don't have any assembler experience. It strikes me as even more hairy than C! Something left to those forced to do it under duress or the few for whom this excites. If I had to ever programme in Assembler I would want to keep it to the absolute, absolute minimum. Dare I ask you to recommended some learning materials?

> If you are familiar with Java AND with disciplined software
> development, a copy of the K&R book for C should be all you need to learn
> the language itself.

Thanks for this tip. I think I will start learning it again as I have the hunch it'll be impossible to avoid entirely :)
 
> >3. www.eluaproject.net
> 
> 	Based on LUA?, probably interpreted.

Yes it is based on LUA and it looks interpreted. I have played with this the least.

> 	I suspect a lot of those are being developed by companies for
> proprietary products, possibly using some internal core "OS" for
> interfacing between application code and the board support layer. As a
> result, even if one got their hands on the driver source, one would have to
> replicate the OS environment to make use of it. At work, I believe the
> common route is to use IOCTL() calls to manipulate the hardware specific
> drivers, leaving a common POSIX (?) interface to C, and wrapping the C
> calls for Ada (if not directly wrapping the assembler entry point to the
> same functionality).

Ummm I think I understood you...

All 3 of the projects I listed are using the STM32F4 direct, without any OS. The chip was released with a bunch of C drivers to access I/O and the various on-board peripherals (i.e. in the chip). You can take a look at them here:

https://github.com/espruino/Espruino/tree/master/targetlibs/stm32f4/lib

Regards
Roy
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