We have an Mbed application running on a LPC1768 module. It’s working great but we want to move to our own hardware design (sticking with the LPC1768 MCU but on a PCB of our own layout). I’m wondering how we get our application installed/deployed on a new out-the-box MCU. The “copy the image onto the USB-flash storage from a PC” deployment method of the LPC1768 module works fine for us but I don’t understand how to get this set up.
I assume the LPC1768 module comes with a firmware image which manages the USB flash copy-across of the application image. Is there any documentation giving details of how this works (firmware source code)? We 're currently building our app using Eclipse, having exported the project out of the online IDE.
TLDR: How to write the firmware to a new MCU/board with no existing firmware/bootloader in place?
I connect a JLink debug probe to my custom board and run JLink tools to flash, debug, etc…
Also, Accono has an inexpensive programmer with tag-connect. I haven’t tried it yet. But my understanding is that it does drag and drop programming. You may want to check it out.
Thanks. I’ve now seen the “Prototype-to-hardware” page (Prototype to hardware | Mbed) which shows how to make your own programming tool out of another mbed board. Looks like there’s no way to do this without some sort of programmer or other. I was hoping there might be a ready-to-go IC/MCU with the USB-MSC functionality I could just stick down next to the LPC1768 and it would work. I think Accono programmer is the next best option as it’s not too expensive, less effort than making up my own tool and doesn’t need any extra programming-software.
Another alternative is to use the bootloader built into each LPC1768 chip. It enables to flash it over the serial port. All you need is a cheap USB to serial converter connected to your PC over a USB cable (or you can equip you custom board with such converter if you have room for it and you don’t mind to make it more expensive - see for example the original LPCmini board). I use this method to program my home made breakout board and LPCmini board:
Thanks. This looks like a good option but I think the Accono will work best for us. I wanted something totally brain-dead-simple for our production team. Even using FlashMagic is likely to end up with mistakes and questions back at my door. I like the drag-n-drop method so our technicians don’t need to install anything (and they’re already familiar with the mbed programming method). Even though the Accono programmer is more expensive than a usb-serial adapter, I think it gets closest to this.
