Just trying to find the relevant material for this board Including how to revert to demo firmware

MBED page: https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/ST-Discovery-F746NG/

ST Product page: http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/evaluation-tools/product-evaluation-tools/mcu-eval-tools/stm32-mcu-eval-tools/stm32-mcu-discovery-kits/32f746gdiscovery.html

Site Registration

• Obviously MBED registration is needed to use developer.mbed.org
• ST.COM registration will save a lot of time and may be required. Many of the ST.COM download links will require you to either fill a form in or sign in
• www.openstm32.org registration will be needed if you wish to use System Workbench for STM32
• note that when I joined openstm32 the site was unable to use HTTPS, so the login was insecure

Connecting the device

Observation1: The backing card suggests you can just plug it in. DON'T. If you plug it into a PC USB port before you install the ST-link driver you will get stuck with two "unknown device" entries.

ST-Link utility can be found at: http://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/stsw-link004.html

After installing ST-link you can force these to update and they will turn into a ST-link and a USB serial device.

Device manager entries after a successful install

• USB Composite Device (Default driver)
• ST-Link Debug
• STMicroelectronics STLink Virtual COM Port (COM*) ... Assigned port will vary.
• USB Mass Storage Device (Default driver)
  • MBED microcontroller USB Device

STM32CubeF7 Embedded software pack

http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/embedded-software/mcus-embedded-software/stm32-embedded-software/stm32cube-embedded-software/stm32cubef7.html

See further down for observations on compiling the demonstration

ST-Link utility http://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/stsw-link004.html Includes USB drivers

ST-Link firmware updater http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/embedded-software/development-tool-software/stsw-link007.html Note this updates to a newer version than the utility does

ST-Link USB Drivers only http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/embedded-software/development-tool-software/stsw-link009.html

Reloading the Demonstration firmware

A binary of the demo can be found in the STM32CubeF7 package at en.stm32cubef7\STM32Cube_FW_F7_V1.7.0\Projects\STM32746G-Discovery\Demonstration

The ST-Link utility can be used to put back the default demonstration. The supplied hex file appears to contain data for both the micro and external flash, as the ST-Link utility has to be configured to use an "External Loader".

If you get some sort of "ELF" error you probably haven't got the loader configured.

The Readme talks about a micro-USB connection. I've obtained a Micro USB to USB A Socket cable (thanks Ebay) and tried connecting a flash drive. It will play AVI video samples from the flash drive provided the video format is smaller than the LCD. If it is bigger it gives up (no cropping or scaling)

Loading MBED built firmware BIN files

The device has a "MBED" drive: DIS_F746NG

• You can drag and drop the MBED BIN to this drive
• The ST-Link utility is also capable of uploading MBED BIN files, which may be preferable.

The drive behavior is a bit different to the LPC MBEDs in that:

• The drive "eats" the file, a recognised BIN file will be programmed and deleted
• The device responds immediately
• Sometimes it needed to be reset after programming

MBED Demos

These are the programs I've tried out, the full list is much longer.

Basic demo https://developer.mbed.org/teams/ST/code/DISCO-F746NG_LCD_demo/

Touchscreen https://developer.mbed.org/teams/ST/code/DISCO-F746NG_LCDTS_demo/

Mandelbrot set http://developer.mbed.org/users/MikamiUitOpen/code/F746_Mandelbrot/

Compiling the demonstration from STM32CubeF7 under OpenSTM32 System Workbench

• I found a post by LaurentL that put me onto how to do this
• I've unzipped the STM32CubeF7 package into drive C:\STM32Cube_FW_F7_V1.7.0 to keep paths short. That's an old DOS habit, it probably could go in documents or elsewhere.
• In the IDE you should close the welcome screen
• On the left hand side of the IDE find the "Project Explorer" panel and right-click inside the blank area
• In the Import dialog select "General" then "Existing projects into Workspace"
• In "Import Projects" navigate to the demonstration folder
• This should offer you one project
• The project will appear in the Project explorer as a tree of "virtual folders"
• The project can now be built using "build all"
• Once built you must use ST Link to program the board. The created HEX file contains code for the MCU and also data for the QSPI flash chip. Other tools can't program the flash chip.
• ST Link must be configured to program the flash
• The easiest way to get the HEX file into ST Link is probably to drag and drop it.
• The built project does not include the video player "app". The code has conditional defines to exclude this module when built using GCC.