Let’s get familiar with the hardware we’ll be working with.
What does this board contain?
A STM32F303VCT6 microcontroller. This microcontroller has
A single-core ARM Cortex-M4F processor with hardware support for single-precision floating point operations and a maximum clock frequency of 72 MHz.
256 KiB of “Flash” memory. (1 KiB = 1024 bytes)
48 KiB of RAM.
A variety of integrated peripherals such as timers, I2C, SPI and USART.
General purpose Input Output (GPIO) and other types of pins accessible through the two rows of headers along side the board.
A Mini-USB interface accessible through the USB port labeled “USB USER”.
An accelerometer as part of the LSM303DLHC chip.
A magnetometer as part of the LSM303DLHC chip.
8 user LEDs arranged in the shape of a compass.
A second microcontroller: a STM32F103. This microcontroller is actually part of an on-board programmer / debugger and is connected to the Mini-USB port named “USB ST-LINK”.
For a more detailed list of features and further specifications of the board take a look at the STMicroelectronics website.
A word of caution: be careful if you want to apply external signals to the board. The microcontroller STM32F303VCT6 pins take a nominal voltage of 3.3 volts. For further information consult the 6.2 Absolute maximum ratings section in the manual