Evaluation boards (Discovery or Nucelo) with virtual com port for debugging

[JFisc.2]

Greetings,

I'm new to STM32 MCUs and bought an evaluation board (STM32F072B-DISCO).

I get along surprisingly well, but there is one thing that bothers me:

This combination of MCU (Cortex M0) and ST-Link/V2 seems to lack a virtual COM port for debugging.

I would like to print debug messages to console to inspect complex program flow and read input from console to test program jumps, data processsing and more.

At the moment I connected an USART to my PC with a USB serial interface, but I assumed that the debugger can do this via USB. There seems to be a complex communication protocol for debugging already (live expressions for example) and I wonder why exchanging text messages is impossible.

So I have 2 questions...

Does this board (STM32F072B-DISCO) certainly not offer a solution to print debug messages to a console and read keyboard input without hardware hacks?

Do other boards (Discovery or Nucelo) with ST-LINK/V2-1 or higher and Cortex M3 or higher certainly offer what I'm missing?

Thank you very much and best regards

Jim

Edit: I work with Debian 11 and STM32CubeIDE.

[Tesla DeLorean]

The​ boards implementing the ST-LINK/V2-1 use a more complex STM32F103 part. Subsequent boards had the newer chip and design.

​

C​heck the schematic for USART connectivity. The CM0(+) parts don't support the SWV debug communication channel either. Keil used an memory based EVT event and trace reporting method. The memory access is already in debuggers.

​

A​ll the NUCLEO boards should support the VCP modes. All of the boards supporting mbed did.

​

Perhaps there is a CMSIS-DAP firmware​

[RetroInTheShade]

On the STM32F072B-DISCO, it looks like there are two solder bridges that will need to be connected to connect the USART RX/TX to the ST-Link.

EDIT: As per comments from @Community member​  & @Community member​  connecting the solder bridges will not help as VCP is not supported on the STLinkV2.

[waclawek.jan]

Those jumpers would do nothing.

ST apparently already planned the VCP feature at the time when this Disco was released, but this did not materialize. And, as Clive said above, the STM32F103 which is mounted there does not support the STLinkV2-1 firmware needed for the VCP.

JW

[JFisc.2]

Thank you all for your help. I quite understand that ST will not emulate new features for already released boards.

So I will order a new evaluation board that fits my needs.