firmware_updater

Development Environment:

If you want to check the source (for whatever reasons) and play with it, you can use Processing 3.5.4 on your system.

Notes & credits:

1. Uses heavily controlP5 Processing library for the GUI.
2. As of May 2022, Processing 4.0b8 has a bug Serial API ( related to Serial.list() ). Highlighted here in github issues & here in forum.
3. Underneath it uses a tiny modified version of MegaTinyCore's serialUPDI based flashing system.

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Prerequisites:

Check / Install Python on your system:

1. MacOS users: Although different versions of MacOS comes shipped with differernt versions of python, a quick way to check would be:
   • Open your SPOTLIGHT search (CMD + SPACE).
   • Type in terminal.
   • When terminal launches, type in: python3.
   • If it is not installed, install it by going to this link.
2. Windows users: No need to do anything.
3. Linux users: No need to do anything.

Install / Update Drivers on your system:

1. MacOS users: MacOS should also come with the serial drivers for the chip we are using, but no harm in upgrading. Install from here.
2. Windows users: Windows should also come with the serial drivers for the chip we are using, but no harm in upgrading. Install from here.
3. Linux users: The built in drivers for CH34x serial chip (that's what we are using in our HW) in Linux Kernel has been broken for a long time. Follow this guide here.

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Operation:

To Flash PCB test firmware:

The firmware that should run in the test PCB does things like, on Power ON, it checks various components and reports over serial. So we need a Debug serial port (currently which is different than flashing port).

The serial port's baudrate is hardcoded at 115200. So make sure your hardware spits data over serial at 115200 baudrate. In the next version we will also open it up to the user of this system.

1. Open the application.
2. Pressing d/D on the keyboard to toggle show/hide the Debug operation related UI elements.
3. Plug in your programmer to your computer (programmer should be attached to the main board as well through UPDI pinouts).
4. Plug in the USB cable coming from the Debug port, to your computer. (The System is deisgned for platforms where we have the Flashing port and Serial ports on two separate interfaces in the hardware)
5. Click on the to refresh serial port. Everytime the programmer or the Serial interface is changed or replugged in, do not forget to refresh the ports.
6. Select your Upload port from it's respective dropdown list.
7. Select your Serial Debug port from it's respective dropdown list.
8. Click on the to select the test firmware binary i.e. watch_firmware.hex (from the location where you downloaded it)
9. When ready, click on the to flash the test firmware.
10. After the flashing is done, in 10 seconds, the board will start spitting out test results and data over serial. So pay attention and follow the on-screen prompts.

To Flash production firmware:

Depending on the usecase, the firmware typically should not have any serial debug logs coming from it, unless that's intended. If it is so intended as the later use-case, Then to flash and test even the production firmware, you can use the methods from last step.

If you do not need the 2nd Debug Serial port in this case, you can hide the Debug UI elements by pressing d/D on the keyboard.

1. Open the application.
2. Plug in your programmer to your computer (programmer should be attached to the main board as well through UPDI pinouts).
3. Click on the to refresh serial port. Everytime the programmer is changed or replugged in, do not forget to refresh the ports.
4. Select your Upload port from it's respective dropdown list.
5. Click on the to select the firmware binary i.e. watch_firmware.hex (from the location where you downloaded it)
6. When ready, click on the to flash the main firmware.

Keyboard shortcuts summary:

1. h/H to toggle show hide console.
2. r/R to refresh serial ports list. (STEP-3)
3. f/F to flash binary. (STEP-7)
4. c/C clear the console area.
5. d/D toggle show/hide Serial debug UI elements.
6. ESC to Quit.
7. TAB to cycle through
8. While tabbing, press ENTER/RETURN to commit/select an operation.
9. To get out of tabbing, perform LEFT-MOUSE click.