The ST Nucleo

In this eBook we will develop real-time signal processing algorithms for a specific piece of hardware, namely the STM32 NUCLEO-F072RB microcontroller board manufactured by STMicroelectronics (often abbreviated as ST). ST provides many inexpensive development boards that are used by hobbyists, students, and professionals to prototype countless applications.

The STM32 Nucleo development board.

In principle, any board from the STM32 family can be used for the exercises, as long as it exposes at least two I2S buses. You can find more information about this family of boards by reading the official documentation.

In order to facilitate the development of applications, ST provided full integrated development environments (IDEs) that you can use to program their boards. These tools can sometimes be overwhelming as they allow for a lot of customization, but they are meant to make your life easier! Attention to detail and reading the documentation will help you in setting up a successful workflow. We will cover these tools and their installation in the next section.

We will conclude this introductory part by illustrating in detail how to build a first simple application on the microcontroller.