Here is some useful advice if you want to familiarizing yourself with Atollic TrueSTUDIO® Lite for the ST Microelectronics STM32 family of controllers. You will need the following: 

• TrueSTUDIO® Lite, the FREE no-code size, no time-limit evaluation version of TrueSTUDIO®-Pro C/C++ development tools.
• ST Microelectronics evaluation board
• ST Microelectronics ST-LINK debugger
• STM32 documentation and code examples 

Here is where to get all that cool stuff: 

TrueSTUDIO® Lite – Go to the Atollic web site at http://atollic.com/index.php/download  you will find the download button for the Lite version “Free Download Lite Version.” Be sure to also click on the second orange button from the top where you get the TrueSTUDIO® Quick Start Guide. You want to follow this religiously when you create and debug your first project. 

STM32 evaluation boards from ST Microelectronics are the best. They are completely kitted out with all peripherals and ports to the outside world that you need to really get to know the part. The new ST-LINK JTAG debugger is an inexpensive and reliable way to download code and do run control debugging. Find them to buy here: http://www.st.com/mcu/modules.php?name=mcu&file=debug_tools&fam=110

Once you get your feet wet with TrueSTUDIO®, you can head over to the page at: http://atollic.com/index.php/videotutorials. Here you can see in-depth video tutorials about various phases of tools usage. They are excellent. As of March 16^th they have videos on creating and building projects and the Eclipse editor. The debugging tutorial is due out soon. 

Users of TrueSTUDIO®-Pro can learn about the seamless integration of advanced tools from the Code Review, Bug Tracking and Revision Control videos. UML Modelling and Code Coverage Analysis (TrueANALYZER) are coming soon! TrueSTUDIO®-Pro is a cost-effective, professional, highly integrated C/C++ toolchain that enables single users or teams of developers to benefit from features of advanced development tools to produce higher quality software in a shorter period of time.

Then, you want to head over to: http://www.st.com/mcu/modules.php?name=mcu&file=familiesdocs&fam=110&doc=60
Here you will find document document RM0008 (informative name, eh?) which the reference manual for the STM32F101xx,  STM32F102xx, STM32F103xx, STM32F105xx, and STM32F107xx families.

Now go  to:  http://www.st.com/mcu/modules.php?name=mcu&file=familiesdocs&fam=110&doc=76 and download STM32F10x_StdPeriph_Lib, which is the second entry from the top. This is the latest version of the standard peripheral library firmware that ST provides. When you unzip it, you will see that it has loads of examples of how to do the things you want to do.

TrueSTUDIO® has a project wizard that creates a project for the ST eval boards. This brings in all of the peripheral library code, and gives you a skeleton of an application that initialized the LCD, the LEDs and a while(1) loop. You can then take the examples from the aforementioned STM32F10x_StdPeriph_Lib and cut them into this basic application very quickly in order to try things out. Recommend you go slow at first. Do one peripheral at a time and get it working to your satisfaction before moving on to the next.

Another very good reference is the book by Joseph Yiu, “The Definintive Guide to ARM Cortex M3” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Some people have called this “the datasheet, written in English”

Some things to bear in mind while getting started:
Remember, TrueSTUDIO® is based on Eclipse. Eclipse is a very configurable environment with lots of options. You don’t want to use some of them as you are beginning, so stick to the Quick Start Guide. I’ve logged a lot of time with these tools, and have not been able to break them by sticking to the basics.

On my laptop, the ST-LINK has an annoying habit of preventing it from booting up or coming back out of hibernation if it is plugged in. Unplug it in these circumstances, and then plug it back in. ST has a new dll coming soon that will probably fix this.

From time to time, we see customers having some issues with the debugger, so check out: http://www.atollic.com/index.php/kb/3-debugging for some good info on common problems. 

If you want to see a demo of the Atollic development tools go to our web site www.joral.ca and sign up for a FREE Webinar.