Running .NET Micro Framework on STM32F4 Discovery Board

This posts brings you a technique that let you write your firmware for STM32F4 Discovery board using C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET. Its not always useful to use this technique to program your device as it comes with some memory as well as processing overheads. Overheads like CLR’s (Common Language RunTime) that executes CIL (Common Intermediate Language) Instructions, Supports multi-threading, exceptions and allows debugging using Visual Studio. CLR also manages memory mapping. So basically lots of overheads are there, and if you are developing some critical signal processing or memory management kind of routines in your application better stick to the bare metal C version with HAL from ST Micro.

Two architecture stacks shown below explains the difference when you are using .NETMF with STM32 and when not. Here PAL implies Platform Abstraction Layer, HAL Implies Hardware Abstraction Layer and CLR implies Common Language RunTime.

Architecture when you use .NET MF for STM32F4

Normal Architecture we use with HAL

Still, for .NET Fans its a good start to utilize their Desktop programming skills into Embedded Systems Development. So if you wish to evaluate this trick for once keep reading….

Things Required includes STM32F4 Discovery board (or any other STM32F4 Board), Mini USB cable, Visual Studio 2010, ST Link Utility, NETMF related boot loaders and configuration files (everything is described later).

The guy at singular Engineer has written a nice clean article about this, with a step by step set up instructions. This is where we got to know about STM32F4 and .NETMF connection, So if you feel curious and want to try out C#, Visual Basic styles for your Discovery board, read the blog at the link given below…

http://singularengineer.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/stm32f4-discovery-board-running-net-microframework/

You may also find interesting

• I2C EEPROM Interfacing with STM32F4xx
• Getting Started with STM32F4 Discovery Board