bootloader

63 Articles

Breadboard Friendly ARM Board Based On STM32F4

November 28, 2013 by 31 Comments

breadboard-friendly-stm32-dev-board

Umm yeah… this is more like it. The STM32F4Stamp is a project which [Frank Zhao] put together to make his ARM prototyping process more like is was back when everything came in a DIP format. As you can see, it’s just narrow enough to leave one row open on the breadboard for jumper wires.

Don’t get us wrong, we do really like STM’s own Discovery Boards for the hardware they deliver at a very low price. But the dual-row pin headers on the larger versions (all except the F0 variant) make it tricky to connect your peripherals. This is pushed to the point that a large percentage of hacks we’ve seen with the Discovery boards are actually just to make connecting external hardware easier.

You may be thinking that there’s a lot missing from this board, but we disagree. Obviously there’s still a USB port which can be used to power the board via a 3.3V regulator. But since the STM32 chips have a built-in bootloader the USB connection can also be used to flash firmware to the processor. Nice! It’s open hardware if you want roll your own. For your convenience we’ve embedded the schematic after the break, along with [Frank’s] demo video.

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Mass Storage Bootloader For Stellaris Launchpad

December 7, 2012 by 5 Comments

mass-storage-bootloader-ti-stellaris-launchpad

[Andrzej Surowiec] liked the functionality of the mass storage bootloader available on some NXP LPC development boards. His latest project was to write a mass storage bootloader for the Stellaris Launchpad. It allows you to flash your compiled firmware to the chip simply by mounting the board as a USB storage device and copying over the binary file. The chip has plenty of flash memory (the bootloader itself takes up 16 KB of the available 256 KB), and the board is already set up for use as USB hardware.

There is a precompiled binary available at the linked page above or you can get the source code from his github repository. We think this project is a good stepping off point for others. For instance, it should be relatively easy to use [Andzej’s] work as the base for implementing filesystem-based I/O control like we saw in the phatIO project.

Drag And Drop Code Onto This ARM Dev Board

September 12, 2012 by 26 Comments

On the continuing list of homebrew ARM dev boards we’ve seen over the past few months, [Squonk42]’s USBug is one of the best we’ve seen. Like many other ARM boards, it breaks out a member of the Cortex M0/M3 family into a 40-pin DIP, but unlike all the others, [Squonk] designed it so you can drag and drop code onto the microcontroller just like a USB thumb drive.

[Squonk]’s trick relies on a certain breed of NXP LPC11xx/LPC13xx microcontrollers. These chips feature a ROM-based mass storage, meaning you can compile code on your desktop and simply shuffle it over to the USBug, no external programmer required. Here’s the relevant app note (PDF in a zip file. Double whammy).

Of course, the USBug features the I/O you’d generally expect from the current crop of Cortex-M3 devices, all while serving up 64 kB of Flash and 12 kB of RAM.

[Squonk] says he’d like to put the USBug on Kickstarter, but unfortunately he’s not a US citizen. In the spirit of Open Hardware, perhaps some maker-based electronics manufacturer will pick up where [Squonk] is forced to leave off.

Remote Uploading To An Arduino With Codebender

July 25, 2012 by 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCHqhV6xPMg&w=470]

A few weeks ago, we saw codebender, an online replacement for the Arduino IDE that allowed you to upload a sketch to your board from a web browser. Over on the codebender blog [Vasilis] and his team are rolling out a way to remotely upload code to an Arduino over Ethernet. Now you don’t even need a serial connection to program an Arduino; it can be done over the Internet to a board in the next room, or on another continent.

The star of this hack is the Ariadne bootloader, an implementation of TFTP that allows any Ethernet-enabled Arduino to receive updates over the Internet. There is still one small problem with the Ariadne bootloader: uploading code over Ethernet requires someone to press the reset button on the Arduino, completely negating the benefits of programming an Arduino over Ethernet.

This problem has been solved before for earlier Arduino boards, so we’re sure [Vasilis] and his team will be able to fix the reset issue in very short order. If you’d like to check out the remote TFTP bootloader and play around with codebender, you can grab Ariadne over on GitHub.

Program Your Arduino Via IR Using The Arduino IDE

May 7, 2012 by 13 Comments

Here’s a way to program an Arduino wirelessly while still using the stock IDE. It uses an alternative bootloader called SuperDuplex along with an IR receiver like the ones used for TV remotes.

As you can see, this does take two parts. There is the target device which has the IR receiver, as well as the transmitting unit which connects to the computer via USB. You can see a demonstration of the programming process after the break. It might be a bit slow, but nothing outrageous.

With hobby electronics we always thing that “what does it do?/what is it for?” is the wrong question. But in this case we there’s a very apparent use for it. If you’ve built a gadget for use in a harsh environment and want to keep the number of openings in the enclosure to a minimum (like for an underwater ROV) this is perfect. Just make sure there’s a window for the IR receiver and you’ll be able to program as much as you want. Of course it still looks like you need a method to manually reset the target chip, but you’ll think of something.

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Chipcon CC1110/CC1111 Serial Bootloader

March 9, 2012 by 5 Comments

[Joby Taffey] just rolled out a serial bootloader for the Chipcon CC1110/CC1111 processors. The project is called CCTL and aims to make prototyping with the Girltech IM-ME a bit less tedious. Up until now firmware for the device had to be pushed in with a GoodFET or TI proprietary programmer which was quite slow. But this bootloader makes it possible to push your code via the chip’s serial port at 115200 baud. But the pretty pink pager isn’t the only device using these chips and to prove it [Joby] send this picture of all the electronics he has on hand running this architecture.

Once the 1KB CCTL bootloader has been flashed to the chip, a serial port or USB to Serial converter can be used as a programmer. [Joby] warns that the Chipcon processors are not 5V tolerant so you need to either use a 3V serial converter or add a level converter into the mix.

CCTL provides the features you’d expect from a bootloader. It uses the chip’s watchdog timer to guard against failure due to broken code. And there is an upgrade mode available at power up. Instruction for use are included in the Github repo linked at the top.

Using An ATmega8 To Program PIC24FJ Chips

December 25, 2011 by 18 Comments

[Fezoj] likes to play around with microcontrollers and decided that he wanted to try a Bus Pirate as a new tool in his adventures. Since it’s open hardware he had his own board made and populated it himself. The trouble is, he works only with AVR chips and doesn’t have a PIC programmer. No problem, he figured out how to flash the PIC24FJ using an ATmega8.

To get started, he grabbed a copy of the flash programming specifications from Microchip. Once he had implemented the protocol in the AVR code, it was just a matter of getting the downloaded PIC firmware to the AVR. An RS232 chip gives him the serial connection he needs, with the help of his own programming software written with Visual Studio.

It’s not a robust solution for prototyping on the PIC platform, but maybe it could be developed for that purpose. For now, all he needed was a bootloader so that he could flash the Bus Pirate via a USB connection.

[via Dangerous Prototypes]