STM32 microcontroller

Long-term owners

a solid competitor to Microchip/AVR, but 14 years too late

Dec 2025 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• ESP32A cheap microcontroller with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, strong docs and many examples, often preferred over a Raspberry Pi when no OS is needed; battery projects can struggle with power draw.190recommend
• Arduino boardsRecommended for easy starts, free tutorials and a broad ecosystem, though critics say cheaper ESP32 and Raspberry Pi boards now beat it on price and performance.81recommend
• Raspberry Pi PicoCheap, capable microcontroller board that people use for physical computing, prototyping and education; critics say it has limited RAM and flash and weak Wi-Fi connectivity.72recommend
• Raspberry Pi RP2040Cheap, well-documented microcontroller with a programmable PIO block for custom I/O, widely recommended for prototyping. Common caveat: its ADCs have only 12-bit resolution and some nonlinearity.29recommend
• ESP32-S3Cheap microcontroller with dual cores, plenty of I/O and strong value for its price. Critics say it is power-hungry and weak for heavy workloads like music encoding.26recommend

Every quote

The 37 most detailed of 40 comments. Each links to the original.

1. STM is popular because their lineup is cheap, offers a lot of features, and the documentation is readily available.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Embassy: Modern embedded framework, using Rust and async”

2. If you want a drop-in hardware capture block with filtering and prescalers, STM32 is the better choice.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’”

3. Yeah you can get <$1 STM32 dev boards and <$4 ST-Link dongles off Aliexpress.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"”

4. General-purpose, including high-performance, low-power, and high I/O: Stm32

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’”

5. Widely used, and an absolute boatload of chip variants for different tasks

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The Death of Arduino?”

6. the cheapest dual-USB chip stocked by LCSC with good vendor tool support

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Can AI design circuit boards yet?”

7. Including stm32, NXP as well as local arm32 licensees gd32,hk32,XHSC.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"”

8. the STM33's timers literally have orders of magnitude more features

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’”

9. CAN and I2S have worked well for years on STM-32/rust.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Embedded Rust or C Firmware? Lessons from an Industrial Microcontroller Use Case”

10. you can just set up the timer and forget about it

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’”

11. STM32s have huge numbers of examples in the wild

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Embassy: Modern embedded framework, using Rust and async”

12. STM32s with Ethernet are cheap and available

    Recommends · Nov 2025

13. At least with ST, the MCU is very cheap.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Embassy: Modern embedded framework, using Rust and async”

14. Stm32 chips are plagued with all sorts of issues and hardware bugs that are very easy to run into.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025

15. From all outward appearances STM stuff is basically rushed to market, fix the bugs later.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Embassy: Modern embedded framework, using Rust and async”

16. Low end STM boards that are price matched with Arduino are not only more powerful by almost a magnitude, but also have an excellent debugging IDE.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The Death of Arduino?”

17. entirely on STM32 now too which is rock solid and the easiest embedded programming has ever felt

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “The Rust on ESP Book”

18. If you want to write straight-up C firmware, then yeah, the esp and stms are both great.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

19. I either use STM32 or NRF exclusively now, and could not be happier.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “The Rust on ESP Book”

20. only some STM32 can do the jobs that PICs / AVRs are specialized in.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “SDCC – Small Device C Compiler”

21. for anything professional an STM32 is orders of magnitudes better

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"”

22. You're going to really, really hate learning about STM32 MCUs.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “ESP32-S31”

23. it was once ahead of the envelope and that made it ubiquitous

    Recommends · Nov 2025

24. recommend moving towards STM32 for doing more advanced stuff

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?”

25. a solid competitor to Microchip/AVR, but 14 years too late

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’”

26. Arduino ships an STM32 which is really feature rich btw.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Arduino Launches Plug-and-Play Modules for Long-Range Sensor Projects”

27. If you want determenstic clock cycles then go for stm32.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Arduino Launches Plug-and-Play Modules for Long-Range Sensor Projects”

28. far less effort these days, and give much better value

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “SDCC – Small Device C Compiler”

29. STM32 is in most volume equipment now for a reason.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “SDCC – Small Device C Compiler”

30. Rust community seems to use stm32 and picos more.

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “ESP32-S31: 320MHz 2C RV32IMAFCP+CLIC, 512KB SRAM, GbE, 802.11ax, 61 GPIO”

31. I wrote and maintain my own HAL for STM32

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Embedded Rust or C Firmware? Lessons from an Industrial Microcontroller Use Case”

32. What is entirely STM's fault is that they still market the F7 based devices (ST Link, Nucleo, etc) as being Mac compatible.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Embassy: Modern embedded framework, using Rust and async”

33. you have to constantly reference the data sheet to make sure you're using the correct pins

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “A 386 PC for Your RP2350”

34. I could see it as locked down as the STM32 ecosystem.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Arduino published updated terms and conditions: no longer an open commons”

35. STM32 had this problem of disappearing for years.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard”

36. those schemes are just as bad as Espressif's

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “ESP32-S31”

37. STM32 on the other hand... ouch. Fun times!

    Criticizes · Nov 2025