Full Text Searchable PDF User Manual
STM32F7xx Discovery Board
User’s
Guide
Version 03
February 2019
DSP Concepts
STM32F7xx Discovery Board User
’s Guide
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Copyright Information
© 2016-2019 DSP Concepts, Inc., ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document may not
be reproduced in any form without prior, express written consent from DSP Concepts,
Inc.
Printed in the USA.
Disclaimer
DSP Concepts, Inc reserves the right to change this product without prior notice.
Information furnished by DSP Concepts is believed to be accurate and reliable. However,
no responsibility is assumed by DSP Concepts for its use; nor for any infringement of
patents or other rights of third parties which may result from its use. No license is granted
by implication or otherwise under the patent rights of DSP Concepts, Inc.
Change Log
Version
Date
Description
Author
01
2017.Mar.16
Original document + TOC
AN
02
2017.May.15 Updated with new version information.
CHP
03
2019.Feb.19
Updating images and clarifying setup steps. Adding
section for how to erase external flash.
AN
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Table of Contents
Connecting Audio Weaver Designer to the Target
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Overview
This document describes how to use Audio Weaver with the STM32F7xx Discovery
board series.
Some of the steps and images herein assume that a STM32F746G Discovery Board is
being used as the target, but the general setup will be the same for all of the STM32F7xx
series boards.
Features (STM32F746G)
Audio I/O: 6-in (stereo USB, stereo mic and stereo line-in).
2 out via stereo line-out. @ 48 kHz
CPU clock speed
216 MHz
Tuning interface:
USB HID device
Flash file system support:
Yes
Booting from flash:
Yes
Fundamental block size:
32 samples
Native data type:
Floating-point
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Board Setup
First, download the ST Board Support Package (BSP) for the appropriate target. These
BSPs are provided on the DSP Concepts website at:
https://www.dspconcepts.com/downloads. After running the installer and accepting the
licensing agreement, the BSP will be installed to a directory in C:\DSP Concepts.
After the BSP is installed on your computer, connect the ST Discovery board to your
computer. The STM32F746 board has three USB connections:
●
Mini-USB – for power and programming
●
Micro-USB – USB FS for audio and control
●
Micro-USB – USB HS (currently unused)
NOTE: Charge-only USB cables will not work. If you are having trouble flashing or
connecting to the board, make sure that your USB cables support data transfer. A
common symptom of a bad cable is an error message while attempting to connect that
reads “Unable to create USB port - is this port in use by another program?".
Connect the mini-USB connector and the middle micro-USB connector to your PC. This
will power on the board and several LEDs will light.
Next, install the STM32 ST-LINK Utility (STSW-LINK004) programming utility
provided by STMicroelectronics on their website (
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After installing, start the ST-Link Utility by clicking the shortcut on your desktop. You
should see something like this:
From the toolbar, click on the ‘connect to target button’ to connect the utility to your ST
Discovery board.
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After a few seconds, the window will update to something like the below image:
Click on the “Full Chip Erase” button to erase the flash contents.
Then Click on the “Program and Verify” button:
Then browse and select a binary loader file from the installed BSP package to program.
These binary files will be in the <BSP-Install-Folder>\Bin directory and will be called
STM32F746_Discovery_<toolchain>.bin. The value of <toolchain> will be one of
EWARM, MDK_ARM, or SW4STM32, which refer, respectively, to binary images
created using IAR’s Embedded Workbench IDE, Keil’s µVision IDE, and AC6’s System
Workbench for STM32 IDE. All the .bin files have the same functionality, though there
may be differences in performance between the toolchains.
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Once a .bin has been selected, click the start button to begin updating the flash memory.
After a few seconds, the programming operation will complete. Power cycle the device to
force a reboot.
If the firmware image update was successful, then LED1 on the target will be flashing
green.
The board will appear as two new USB devices (USB Audio and HID device) and the
USB driver installation should happen automatically on Windows 7 and Windows 8.
That is, the board uses default Windows drivers. No special drivers need to be installed
1
.
1
Windows XP is currently not supported.
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The board will also appear as a USB audio device on your PC. Select this under
Windows audio playback device settings. On Windows 10, the audio device for the
STM32F746G looks like this once it has been selected as the default device:
Connecting Audio Weaver Designer to the Target
To start running signal processing layouts on your target, launch the Audio Weaver
Designer application. From the AWE Server Window (not from the Designer window)
select the menu item Target→Change Connection
In the drop list select “USB” and change the PID and VID settings if necessary as shown
below
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For the STM32F746G board, set VID = 1155 and PID = 746.
Click on the “Change” button. This window will be dismissed, and the Server window
will update to reflect the connection to the Discovery board. For the STM32F746G
target, you will see:
At this point the Audio Weaver Server can communicate with the board. To make sure
that the Audio Weaver Designer sees this change, click on the “Reconnect to Server”
button.
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The default system drawn in Audio Weaver Designer is shown below.
The target has a fundamental block size of 32 samples and operates at a fixed sample rate
of 48 kHz. The left input pin ‘SYS_in’ indicates 6 channels of input. The first two
channels are USB stereo inputs, the next two channels are stereo inputs from the line-in
and the last two channels are stereo inputs from the stereo microphone inputs. The right
output pin ‘SYS_out’ is also stereo and this is the audio being output to the line-out
connector.
Create and run a simple model in Audio Weaver and plug in speakers or headphones to
the STM32 Discovery board’s 3.5 mm audio output jack. Once you play audio over the
USB audio device from your PC, you should hear audio being rendered by the STM32
Discovery board!
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Using GPIO Inputs and Outputs
The Discovery boards have a variety of LEDs, I/O pins, and a blue user button. Audio
Weaver has a GPIO block that allows either output to a GPIO pin or led or input from a
GPIO pin or the blue user button. However, the block must be setup to access the desired
pin. Each pin and led on the board is labelled. The GPIO block numbers pins starting
with pin 1 need to be mapped to the actual pins on the board. See table below for
STM32F746NG-Discovery Board Available GPIO Pin Map
.
GPIO Block
Pin Number
Board Input Pin
Name
Board Output Pin
Name
1
Blue User Button
LED
See the GPIO_SourceSink.awd in the Examples directory for an example of how GPIO
can be used inside of Audio Weaver.
Erasing External Flash
The File Manager built into the AWE Server can be used to store layouts in .awb format
on the board, which allows for standalone operation of the target hardware. See the
‘AWE-Core-Integration-Guide.pdf’ documentation for more details on standalone
operation and how to use the Flash Manager.
Some hardware will by default have some non-zero values stored in the external, off-chip
flash memory. For the STM32F7xx series boards, this memory needs to be erased before
being able to use the Flash Manager to download binary signal processing layouts
(.awb’s) to the hardware. If the external flash memory on the connected hardware is
invalid, it will look something like this in the Flash Memory Manager:
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To erase the off-chip flash memory, connect the ST32F7xx board to your PC, launch the
ST-Link utility and click the ‘Connect to target’ icon. Click the ‘External Loader’ menu
item and select ‘Add External Loader’. On the next menu, select the appropriate loader
for your hardware and click ‘Validate’. For the STM32F746G, the loader is called
‘N25Q128A_STM32F746G-DISCO. Once the loader is added, click ‘External Loader’
again, choose the appropriate loader and click ‘Sector Erase’, as shown below.
This action will erase all the external flash memory sectors on your hardware and can
take several minutes to complete. Once erased, the Flash Manager tool will be able to add
and delete files to the flash memory of your hardware.