Source: https://mokxi.com/learn/stm32-course Updated: 2026-11-11 Embedded track STM32 # An STM32 course for people who already know an Arduino The STM32F411, a Cortex-M4 at 84 MHz, where a pin is a port and a number and every peripheral starts with its clock off. Free In your browser 2 courses, 12 lessons, about 11 hours Start free The LED that is on when the pin is low See the course Overview ## How you will learn it STM32 chips are in a huge share of professional products, which makes them the natural next board after an Arduino. They are also stricter: you turn on a peripheral's clock before you use it, and pins are named by port. Embedded on the STM32F411 walks through that change with familiar projects: a blink, a button, a chaser on one port, PWM from a timer and a serial console. Under the hood then shows the same register ideas on the Uno. Outcomes ## What you will learn - Drive an active-low LED and read a button on an STM32 port. - Run six pins from one port and generate PWM from a hardware timer. - Talk to the board over a serial console. - Understand clocks, ports and timers well enough to read the reference manual. Your route ## The courses and lessons to take Every lesson opens in the editor right away, signed in or not, and the simulator checks each step. - Step 1 · 6 lessons · 6 h ### Embedded on the STM32F411 The whole STM32 course. - The LED that is on when the pin is low The Black Pill wires its LED between the rail and the pin, so the pin has to go low to light it. Active low, and why so much hardware is built that way. - Six pins on one port A dot along PA1 to PA6, from an array of pin numbers. What a port is, and why six pins on the same one can be written in a single instruction. - PWM from a timer PA0 is TIM5 channel 1, and once it is set up the hardware holds the brightness on its own. Prescaler, reload, and the compare value. - The board talks and listens USART1 on PA9 and PA10, the monitor, and an echo driven from a receive interrupt. What printing costs and why the receive side is different. Every lesson in the course - Step 2 · 6 lessons · 5 h ### Under the hood The same register ideas, taught slowly on the Uno. - DDR, PORT and PIN The three registers behind every digital pin: count in binary on three lamps with one write to PORTB, turn on a pull-up through PORTD, and read a button straight out of PIND. - Timers by hand Timer 1 set up register by register: a prescaler, CTC mode and OCR1A for a match every 500 ms, the compare flag polled and cleared by hand, and no millis() anywhere. Every lesson in the course Keep going ## Guides and tools on the same subject Simulator ### STM32 simulator Open it Guide ### STM32 HAL and register code Open it Guide ### STM32F411 Black Pill pinout Open it Track ### Embedded track Arduino, ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico and STM32: pins, timing, buses, motors, WiFi, registers and debugging, every lesson checked on a simulated board. See the whole track Questions ## Questions people ask Is STM32 harder than Arduino? A little. There is more setup, mostly clocks and pin modes, but the ideas are the same. Knowing an Arduino first makes the course much easier. Which STM32 board does the course use? The STM32F411, the chip on the Black Pill and the Nucleo-F411RE. The code carries over to other STM32 parts with small changes. Do I need ST's tools installed? No. Code compiles and runs in your browser on a simulated STM32F411.