STM32F411 GPIO Tutorial using STM32CubeIDE

Last Updated on: February 4th, 2025

This is the Series of tutorials on the STM32 Microcontroller. The aim of this series is to provide easy and practical examples that anyone can understand.  In this tutorial, we are going to see the STM32F411 GPIO Tutorial using STM32CubeIDE.

This tutorial aims to help beginners to understand the basics of STM32 GPIO programming using the higher-level abstractions, making it suitable for those who want to learn the fundamentals of microcontroller interaction. If you want to learn GPIO programming without HAL, you can read this Baremetal STM32 GPIO Tutorial.

You can also read, Getting Started with STM32 RTOS, STM32 GPIO RTOS tutorial, and STM32 Bootloader Tutorial.

Prerequisites

Before starting this STM32F411 GPIO Tutorial, Please go through the below tutorials.

• Understanding GPIO

Hardware Requirements

• STM32F411CE Black Pill board (ARM Cortex M4)
• LED
• Pushbutton

STM32F411 GPIO Tutorial using STM32CubeIDE

Writing On a Port Pin

Writing data to a designated port refers to transmitting data from the controller to any connected peripheral device. Here, an LED visualizes the data leaving the parallel port.

Prototype

HAL_GPIO_WritePin (GPIO_TypeDef* GPIOx, uint16_t GPIO_Pin, GPIO_PinState PinState)

Reading from a Port

The reading operation involves retrieving data from any peripheral device. In this case, we are using a simple push-button (switch) to provide input to the port pins.

Prototype

HAL_GPIO_WritePin (GPIO_TypeDef *GPIOx, uint16_t GPIO_Pin, GPIO_PinState PinState)

STM32F411CEU6 Black Pill board

The STM32F411CEU6 microcontroller on the Black Pill development board has a total of 5 GPIO ports: Port A, B, C, D, and E. These ports correspond to different pin groups on the microcontroller, with Port A (GPIOA) offering the most pins, from (PA0 to PA15). Port B (GPIOB) includes 8 pins (PB0 to PB7), while Port C (GPIOC) has 10 pins (PC0 to PC15), although some may not be available on the Black Pill). Port D (GPIOD) is composed of 6 pins (PD0 to PD5), and Port E (GPIOE) has only 3 pins (PE0 to PE2). While the Black Pill board exposes only a subset of these pins through its headers, these GPIOs can be configured for a wide range of functions such as UART, SPI, I2C, ADC, PWM, and more, depending on the specific needs of your project. Some pins on these ports are also used for special functions like SWD (Serial Wire Debug) or JTAG for debugging, and NRST for reset.

LED Interfacing

The STM32F411CEU6 Black Pill development board typically has one onboard LED. We will be using the onboard LED of the latest version of the STM32F411CEU6. So, this board comes with a user LED connected with a PC13 pin of PORTC through a current limiting resistor.  Here we are using onboard LED from Port C and pin 13 Further, we will see how to create a project using STM32cube IDE and to configure pin PC13 as an LED in STM32CubeIDE, follow these steps:

Project Creation

• Open STM32CubeIDE and create a new STM32 project for your target microcontroller.
• Once the project is created, open the .ioc file to access the configuration settings.
• In the Pinout & Configuration tab, find the pin labelled PC13
• Click on PC13 to configure it. In the dropdown menu, select “GPIO_Output“. This sets the pin as a digital output.

• In the Configuration tab (on the left side), click on “GPIO” to adjust settings.
• You can configure the output level (default is usually low), speed, pull-up/pull-down resistors, etc., as per your requirements.
• In this tutorial I configured as no pull-up and no pull-down.  Once all the configurations are done  save with CTRL+S

STM32F411 GPIO Tutorial – Source Code

• Open the main.c file in the Core/Src directory. In the main() function, you can toggle the LED with something like:

  /* Infinite loop */
  /* USER CODE BEGIN WHILE */
  while (1)
  {
     HAL_GPIO_WritePin(GPIOC, GPIO_PIN_13, GPIO_PIN_SET);   // Turn LED on
     HAL_Delay(1000);                                         
     HAL_GPIO_WritePin(GPIOC, GPIO_PIN_13, GPIO_PIN_RESET); // Turn LED off
     HAL_Delay(1000);
    /* USER CODE END WHILE */

    /* USER CODE BEGIN 3 */
  }
  /* USER CODE END 3 */

You can download the complete project from GitHub

Output

[To Be Added]

Push-button Interfacing

To use a push button with STM32F11, we will configure GPIO pins of STM32F411CEU6 microcontroller as a digital input pin. In this Push button Interfacing, we will control onboard LED‘s of STM32F11 with an onboard push button.

The user Push button connected to pin 1 of PORTA GPIO. We will use this push button PA1 as a digital input to manage the onboard LED on the board.

When interfacing a push button with a microcontroller, our goal is to detect whether the button is pressed or not. Depending on the circuit configuration, pressing or releasing the button produces either a logic high or logic low output.

Controlling LEDs with Push Button STM32F411 Black Pill Board

To demonstrate, we will use a push button to control the onboard LED of the STM32 board.

• The pin A1 will read the input from the push button. If the state is active high, it will turn on the onboard LED of the STM32407 Discovery board. Since the LED is connected to the PC13 pin in a No pull-up and No pull-down configuration, it will typically show an active high output.
• When the push button is pressed, the LED will turn on; otherwise, it will stay off.
• Now, we will see how to configure the pushbutton as input. We already know the LED configuration from the previous example.

Further, we will see how to create a project using STM32cube IDE. To configure pin PA0 as an push button in STM32CubeIDE, follow these steps:

Project Creation

• Open STM32CubeIDE and create a new STM32 project for your target microcontroller.
• Once the project is created, open the .ioc file to access the configuration settings.
• In the Pinout & Configuration tab, find the pin labelled PA1
• Click on PA1 to configure it. In the dropdown menu, select “GPIO_Input“. This sets the pin as a digital input and PA1 pin is configured with Pull-Up configuration.
• Click on PC13 to configure it. In the dropdown menu, select “GPIO_Output“. Once all the configurations are done save with ctrl+S

Connection

• One terminal of the push button is connected to PA1 (the GPIO pin on the STM32F411CEU6).
• GND: The other terminal of the push button is connected to GND.

STM32F411 GPIO Tutorial – Source Code

• Open the main.c file in the Core/Src directory. In the main() function, you can toggle the LED with something like:

  /* Infinite loop */
  /* USER CODE BEGIN WHILE */
  while (1)
  {
    if (HAL_GPIO_ReadPin(GPIOA, GPIO_PIN_1) == 1)      // if Button pressed
    {
       HAL_GPIO_WritePin(GPIOC, GPIO_PIN_13, GPIO_PIN_SET);   // Turn on the LED
    }
    else
    {
      HAL_GPIO_WritePin(GPIOC, GPIO_PIN_13, GPIO_PIN_RESET); // Turn off the LED
    }
    /* USER CODE END WHILE */

    /* USER CODE BEGIN 3 */
  }
  /* USER CODE END 3 */

You can download the complete project from GitHub

Output

[To Be Added]

If you want to learn about other STM32 Microcontrollers GPIO Tutorials, You can read the below tutorials:

• STM32F407 Discovery Board Tutorial
• STM32F103CBT6 Blue Pill board Tutorial
• STM32F767Zi Nucleo board Tutorial 

You can also read the below tutorials.

Linux Device Driver Tutorials	C Programming Tutorials
FreeRTOS Tutorials	NuttX RTOS Tutorials
RTX RTOS Tutorials	Interrupts Basics
I2C Protocol – Part 1 (Basics)	I2C Protocol – Part 2 (Advanced Topics)
STM32 Tutorials	LPC2148 (ARM7) Tutorials
PIC16F877A Tutorials	8051 Tutorials
Unit Testing in C Tutorials	ESP32-IDF Tutorials
Raspberry Pi Tutorials	Embedded Interview Topics
Reset Sequence in ARM Cortex-M4	BLE Basics
VIC and NVIC in ARM	SPI – Serial Peripheral Interface Protocol
STM32F7 Bootloader Tutorials	Raspberry PI Pico Tutorials
STM32F103 Bootloader Tutorials	RT-Thread RTOS Tutorials
Zephyr RTOS Tutorials – STM32	Zephyr RTOS Tutorials – ESP32
AUTOSAR Tutorials	UDS Protocol Tutorials
Product Reviews	STM32 MikroC Bootloader Tutorial
VHDL Tutorials	Arduino Tutorials