While I agree that I2C is mostly broken and filled with workarounds (at least in the STM32F103x family), the SPI in master mode (as I understand you are referri

While I agree that I2C is mostly broken and filled with workarounds (at least in the STM32F103x family), the SPI in master mode (as I understand you are referring to) works fairly well. To receive data you have to send clock pulses. Sending clock pulses also means that you are transmitting (zeroes in your case), but there is no way to escape from that since it's the way SPI works. SPI in STM32 is very precise with timings and general behavior. Take a look on how some seasoned users implement SPI to do VGA graphics: https://www.artekit.eu/vga-output-using-a-36-pin-stm32/ https://www.artekit.eu/vga-output-using-a-36-pin-stm32/