STM32 Nucleo F401RE Development Board

The STM32 Nucleo boards are the official Development Boards from STMicroelectronics. It features the ARM Cortex M4 32-bit STM32F401RET6 microcontroller which is in LQFP64 package. The Boards pinout is similar to Arduino UNO and has many other additional pins to expand performance. This board also comes with an integrated ST-LINK/V2-1 programmer and debugger; hence it is very easy to get started with this board.

As shown in the image above, there are three LEDs, where LD1 is for indicating USB communication, LD2 is programmable LED, and LD3 indicates power. Similarly, there are two push buttons where one is user programmable, and the other is to reset the Microcontroller. The Board operates with 3.3V supply but a wide voltage range of 7-12V can be provided to the VIN pin since it has an on-board voltage regulator.

 

Nucleo-F401RE Pinout Configuration

The STM32 Nucleo board pinout is shown above. As you can see, there are two sets of pins. The pin one resembles the Arduino UNO and the blue one is the STM32 style (Morpho). The arduino like pins are female connector pins which exactly match the order and position of Arduino UNO pins and hence any Arduino shield can be used with these development boards.

The Arduino pins are split into category CN5, CN6, CN8, and CN9. Each category pin can be tabulated as follows:

Pin Category	Pin Type	Pin names	Description
CN6	Power	IOREF	3.3V Reference Voltage pin
RESET	Resets the Microcontroller
+3.3V	Provides 3.3V as output can also be used to power the MCU
+5V	5V output only pin
GND	Ground pins
CN8	Analog Pins and I2C	A0-A1	Used to measure Analog Voltage
A4 and A5	These pins can also be used for I2C Communication A4 is SDA and A5 is SCL
CN5	Digital Pins and SPI	D8-D15	Digital GPIO pins
AVDD	Can be used to provide analog reference voltage
GND	Ground Pins
D13, D12. D11 and D10	Acts as SCK, MISO, MOSI and CS pins respectively for SPI communication
CN9	Digital Pins and USART	D0 to D7	Digital GPIO pins
D0 and D1	Acts as Rx and Tx pins respectively for USART communication

 

Apart from the Arduino pins, the board also has 76 (38+38) GPIO pins as male headers on either side of the board as shown above. These pins are classified into CN7 and CN10 with each having 38 Pins. They comprise of GPIO pins, Analog Pins, Timer Pins, and Power pins. The name of the pins can be found in the image above. They are also categorized with the table below:

Pin Category	Pin Type	Pin names	Description
CN7	Port pins	PC0, PC1, PC2, PC3, PC10, PC11, PC12, PC13, PC14, PC15	Port C digital I/O pins
PD2	Port D I/O pin
PA0, PA1, PA4, PA13, PA14, PA15	Port A I/O pins
PB7, PB8 and PB9	Port B I/O pin
PH0 and PH1	Port H I/O pins
Power	VBAT	Can be used to power them module from battery
+3.3V	Provides 3.3V as output can also be used to power the MCU
+5V	5V output only pin
VIN	Unregulated input power pin
RESET	Resets the MCU
IOREF	Reference Voltage Pin
CN10	Port Pins	PC4, PC5, PC6, PC7, PC8, PC9	Port C I/O Pins
PA2, PA3, PA4, PA6, PA7, PA10, PA11 and PA12	Port A I/O Pins
PB1, PB2, PB3, PB4, PB5, PB6, PB8, PB9, PB10, PB12, PB14, PB15	Port B I/O Pins
Power	U5V	5V Power Pin
GND	System Ground of the MCU
AGND	Analog Ground Pin

 

Technical Specifications

Microcontroller	STM32F401RET6 (32-bit)
Architecture	ARM Cortex M4 CPU with FPU
Power consumption	2.4uA at standby without RTC
CPU Frequency	84 MHz
Crystal Oscillator Range	4 to 26 MHz
MCU Operating Voltage (VDD)	1.7V to 3.6V
Board Operating Voltage (VIN)	7V to 15V
Flash Memory	512KB
SRAM	96 KB
GPIO Pins	50
ADC	12-bit 16Channel
RTC	In-built 32kHz with calibration
Timers	16-bit (6) 32-bit (2)
Watchdog Timers	2
USART/UART Communication	4
I2C Communication	3
SPI Communication	3
USB2.0 Support	Yes
Internal Crystal Oscillator	Yes, 16MHz
On Board Debugger	Yes, Serial Wire and JTAG

 

Note: More technical information can be found in the STM32 Nucleo-F401RE Datasheet, linked at the bottom of this page.

 

Other Development Boards

Arduino UNO, Arduino Pro Mini, Arduino Mega, Arduino Due, Arduino Leonardo, Raspberry Pi, PIC Development Board, AVR Development Board, MSP430 Launchpad, Intel Edison, ESP32

 

How to Program STM32 Nucleo Boards

The Nucleo Development Board is relatively easy to get started and learn since it has an in-built programmer and debugger. The Board can be programmed with many Development tool chains which are listed below:

1. Keil MDK-ARM
2. IAR Workbench
3. GCC based IDE
4. ARM Mbed (online)

Out of these, the Keil MDK is the most used one. It is beginner friendly and on top of that, it is free to use, just download the IDE and its respective drive from link below.

Software: Keil MDK Version 5

Driver: Nucleo USB Driver

 

Applications

The STM32 MCUs are commonly used in many industrial and commercial products these days. Some specific application include-

• Low Power portable Electronics
• Robotics
• System Automation
• IOT

 

2D Model and Dimensions