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5 years, 8 months ago.
what is the purpose of or functionality of the st-link found on all stm32f mbed compliant
what is the purpose of or functionality of the st-link found on all stm32f mbed compliant
1 Answer
5 years, 8 months ago.
The ST-Link has several functions:
It emulates a thumbdrive on your host PC. When you drag-and-drop or copy a binary executable file for the board to this drive the ST-Link will flash that code into the target processor (using SWD) and restarts the target code when flashing has finished.
The ST-Link also emulates a USB virtual serial port for the host PC and it is the interface between a serial port on the target and the virtual com port. The ST-Link will also provide an interface for the SWO debug output to the PC. It can also provide a general debug interface (setting breakpoints etc), but this is not supported by the online mbed environment.
In addition ST-Link hardware provides power from the USB port to the target and generates the clock for the target.