Fighting with computers

After testing different choices, I have come to test a package called Platformio that runs over Atom editor. Atom is a multiplatform code editor that looks a bit like Sublime but it is open source and they claim highly hackable. The nice thing about PlatformIO is that it looks like a nice IDE that can handle a good portion of embedded processors from Arduino variants, to ESP8266 and ESP-32 to many ARM variants from NXP, ST, Atmel, etc. For the f103c8t6 board I am using I can use the config details above in platformio.ini file in the project folder and it all works nicely on one of my Macs, the one using El Capitan. Unfortunately, my laptop is still running Mavericks and for that it seems there is not a libusb available that plays nicely with ST-Link programmer/debugger dongle. Now I am going to target my dcservo code for this Cortex M3 processor.

If you follow the blog you know I use Arduino IDE for quite a while and I am quite fond of the eco- system as it usually makes things simple. With some effort, same environment works for other beefier processors like ESP8266 or even STM32. But what usually kept me away from the various ARM offerings, with the exception of mbed on-line compiler for Nucleo boards has been the commitment level manufacturers seem to ask from engineers before they can start to think using their wonderful hardware. So far my point has been that life is to short to go through so many manuals and datasheets. Recently, an American maker told me he was about to build a piece of hardware using a STM23F103C8T6 core to mimic my dcservo project I built around Arduino and other processors (even around a Maple Mini with a similar STM32 processor in fact). He would welcome any help on the software side of things so I had to have a look at how I could help and ventured into the wild west of development tools for t...