Accomplished
This week, I followed multiple tutorials to set up FreeRTOS and the beginning of what our team’s workflow would look like on the STM32.
Using an STM32 Nucleo board that our team had on hand, the STM32F401xE, I used the STM32CubeMX software to enable FreeRTOS on the board. This software has a user interface for easily using methods in the FreeRTOS library, which I experimented with to create two simple tasks. I was able to change the priority of tasks and figure out other settings like configuring the heap size. Since STM32CubeMX is more for configuration and code generation, I couldn’t figure out how to compile and deploy the code without installing STM32CubeIDE, so I moved onto setting up the STM32 development environment on VSCode.
Recently STM32 developed an extension on VSCode called “STM32Cube for Visual Studio Code” which integrates build systems like CMake so users can compile STM32 projects within VSCode. With this extension, I was able to compile and deploy the STM32CubeMX-generated FreeRTOS firmware onto my STM32 Nucleo board.
Progress / Schedule
I will need to spend a bit more time making the STM32 development workflow more seamless and integrated, since it took me some time to install and debug drivers for the STM32 Nucleo board. This way it will be easier for the team to work on different parts of the STM32 software concurrently.
Otherwise, I am mostly on schedule but will have to prepare and do some research for collecting IMU measurements and experimenting with different filters, namely the FIR and Kalman filters.
Deliverables / Next Steps
Next week, I will:
- push the STM32 development environment up to the team GitHub and work with Enrique to set up a more seamless workflow for working on the STM32.
- outline and plan what types of tasks we will need on the TX and RX MCUs. This will include identifying what initialization and run will look like for each task, as well as task priority.
- research the FIR and Kalman filters for the IMU.