STM32 Timers
Everything related to digital electronics is related to time. Timer, counter, frequency, pulse width, clock and time are the most common words one may find in this arena. Microcontrollers just like humans need heart-beats and these come from clock sources. Apart from system clock, timers are clock sources that can be used as heart-beats for various applications. All modern micros are embedded with timer-counter modules and generally they are used for generating time bases, counting pulses, measuring time periods of waveforms, generating pulse width modulation (PWM) signals, triggering external devices and timing special events. STM32 micros have several timers designed for such applications. However unlike most 8-bit micros which possess two/three timers with limited functionalities, the timers of STM32s are very elaborate and complex. This explains why documentations related to timer modules take about 25% of any STM32 reference manual.
Before we begin exploring STM32 timers, I must point out that I won’t be able to cover every aspect of all timer modules as they are vast and need lot of explanations, something which is beyond the scope of a single post. This is why in this issue we shall explore the very basics of timer modules enough to get STM32 timers to work.
