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Programming Devices

Programming a device, also known as flashing a device, is where one take the binary code of a program and writes it into the storage space of the device. This guide goes into details about how to use the SJSU-Dev2 build system make in order to build and program devices.

Usage

make [target] [PLATFORM=[linux|lpc40xx|stm32f10x|...]]
make [target] [PLATFORM=platform] [JTAG=[stlink|jlink|...]]
make [target] [PLATFORM=platform] OPTIMIZE=2

Finding Demos to Build and Program

All of the demonstration projects can be found in the demos/ directory.

SJTwo Demos

Within the demos/sjtwo/ you will find demos. Since it is the main development board used by SJSU-Dev2 contributors, it has the most demos.

Multiplatform Demos

These demos can be run and executed across platforms. Feel free to flash such projects onto any of your boards. These typically do not attempt to manipulate hardware.

Blue Pill Demos

The blue pill demos can be found in the demos/stm32f10x directory as that is the name of the series of microcontroller that is present on the blue pill.

ARM Cortex Demos

The arm_cortex/ demos are an example of a multiplatform demo that work across systems that use arm cortex chips. Such demos will not work for RISC-V, MIPS and other CPUS. These demos should be loadable to any support ARM cortex based microcontroller.

Others

Search around and explore this directory. The first layer is always the name of the platform and the next layer is all of the demonstration projects.

Step 1. Build an application

Choose a demo to try out and cd into the directory. If you aren't sure which one to choose for this guide, simply go into the projects/hello_world project for starters and branch out later.

We need to build the application before we can attempt to program it into the device.

make application

Step 1.2. Build an application for the stm32f10x microcontroller

If you are using a different platform than the SJTwo board you WILL need to specify the PLATFORM name. In this example, we are building an application for the stm32f10x series of MCUs.

make application PLATFORM=stm32f10x

Step 1.2.1 (Optional) Enabling Optimizations

You can also set the optimization level in order to change the performance of the program. In this example we set the optimization level to "s" which produces the smallest binary size. This is helpful as most MCUs do not have a lot of storage space, and this flag can allow developers to squeeze more code/features into a application/product than if it wasn't used.

make application PLATFORM=stm32f10x OPTIMIZE=s

Step 2. Programming Devices

Programming a device is nearly the same command as build an application but replace the "application" target name with "flash". Like so:

make flash

The above command only works for the LPC series of microcontrollers which are used for the SJTwo and SJOne boards.

In general, you will want to program a device using a JTAG or SWD debugger such as an stlink debugger. To flash using a JTAG device, you need to supply the JTAG parameter in the command like so:

make flash JTAG=stlink

Other options for JTAG are available such as JTAG=jlink or JTAG=buspirate. make flash supports all debug devices that OpenOCD supports. stlink is the preferred choice for SJSU-Dev2 users as it is cheaper and more widely available on Amazon, Ebay, AliExpress and other online stores.

make flash JTAG=stlink OPTIMIZE=s

Note the usage of OPTIMIZE=s here. This specifies that you want to flash the firmware with the optimization level s which stands for size optimized. If you want to compile a binary to the smallest size, like in this example, and flash that same binary to the MCU, you must include this flag.