i actually started with a ‘maple clone’ board:
Olimexino-STM32
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1138
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/S … e-hardware
Image
and actually started with the original maple IDE as i found the documentations from leaflabs pretty well written and relatively simple to get started
http://docs.leaflabs.com/docs.leaflabs.com/index.html
i’m working on a linux platform (opensuse). Accordingly with windows (e.g. 7, 8, 10) there may be various challenges getting the driver to work.
however as pointed out by many here, it’s probably better to use the Arduino IDE which now support ‘maple’ boards in addition to Arduino boards which are more updated and has more (perhaps better) features
the Olimexino-STM32 i received comes with the *boot loader* pre-installed as firmware in its flash
the good thing about that would be that the ‘maple’ board can be programmed simply through a normal USB cable (mini usb connector) with the IDE.
‘internally’ the programming is done via DFU (device firmware update) which is actually handled by the boot loader itself
(and this is some of my initial struggles getting started programming the board via dfu using a USB cable: https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=5416.0)
the usual ‘hello world’ tutorial would be to try to blink leds on the board itself
however, should you be starting with a board that do not have the *boot loader* it would likely be necessary to program the board through a JTAG / SWD programmer such as https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/JTA … SB-TINY-H/ (accordingly this is not the only way)
i’m personally not familiar with this aspects (i.e. installing/programming the bootloader via JTAG/SWD programmer) but roger et.al has written up quite a lot about Arduino_STM32, the boot loader etc
https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/ … STM32/wiki
I’d guess the initial stumbling blocks is partly due to ‘information overload’ and that there are a large amount / pieces of information scattered in various places. some of the starting points which i found useful when i got started happens to be
the leaflabs maple web site iteslf
http://docs.leaflabs.com/docs.leaflabs.com/index.html
the wiki by roger et.al.
https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/ … STM32/wiki
http://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?ti … 103_boards
documents from STM website itself
http://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers/s … tId=LN1565
as well as even olimex the manufacturer from which i bought the board
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/S … e-hardware
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/S … -STM32.pdf
(^^i’d think olimex did pretty decent documentation if u review their manual above )
