stlink VS PlatformIO

I see stlink clones on ebay for $7. The stlink software runs on linux : https://github.com/stlink-org/stlink. Or use pyocd.

This one?

I did do a little bit of digging since this post. I think my distro has this set of tools:https://github.com/stlink-org/stlink

I flashed mine using the flasher included into a Stm32f4 discovery board I had laying around. Used this toolset https://github.com/stlink-org/stlink to flash the firmware. Not sure if you can use UART to flash, if that's so, you might be able to use a raspberry pi or Arduino as an interface which is far way more accessible than the stlink flasher.

Usually the better tools (eg. Segger's J-link, st-link with st-util, OpenOCD) can emulate a GDB-server to which you can connect from a gdb or from the debug session at your IDE.

In order to get into stm32 development I bought a cheap stm32 blue pill clone (STM32F103C8T6) and a ST-LINK v2. I tried to get the info by using the st-info --probe command in the open source version of STlnk tools. I pluged in the stlinkv2 connecting the headers correctly to the dev board and the boot1 and boot0 was in 0 position, no additional connection was given.

Have a look here: https://github.com/stlink-org/stlink/issues/651 Maybe you have the same problem.

For the ESP32 in read mode, we've successfully developed a project using PlatformIO that accepts the key during build time and stores it in memory.

Check out Zephyr OS and Platform IO. Zephyr is part of the Linux foundation and has similarities to Linux with how it performs hardware abstraction (device tree). Platform IO integrates with other frameworks including mbed and Arduino.

PlatformIO together with avr-stub can be used to do source level debugging but there are some caveats.

Look into https://platformio.org/, it can abstract over a few RTOSes, and can show you which OSes work with which chips/boards.

If the HW looks like it works, you could also try alternate programming software. (e.g. TinyGo or PlatformIO)

You might have better luck with PlatformIO than the Arduino IDE; it's better at automatically choosing the serial port, though I can't say I've used it under Windows.

My other suggestion takes more work but will make your life oh so much better. Professionally I have used and highly recommend. https://platformio.org/ which is free!

Will you be doing embedded Linux? Embedded RTOS? Bare metal? Microcontrollers? SoC (say, FPGA with a hard processor core)?

You can do a lot with QEMU. https://bootlin.com/ has a lot of great, free training material.

https://bootlin.com/doc/training/embedded-linux-qemu/embedde...

is one of my favorites.

Learning to cross-compile, do embedded debugging, the process of booting an embedded system (which varies depending on the answers to the above questions), learning how to read a technical reference for the processor you’re using as well as for peripherals you’re likely to interact with - SPI, i2c, UART, maybe PCIe, are all handy skills. Learn a bit about JTAG, hardware, reading schematics, etc. Even being able solder is helpful.

There may be books (I had a great embedded Linux book when I started) but there are lots of online materials too. Check out https://platformio.org/

There are fun embedded boards and projects for microcontrollers too - micropython on an rpi pico, tinygo, eLua, etc.