I would like to program stm32f4 or possibly others from beaglebone (black) board.
Is it possible to load firmware over serial (uart) or somehow to the stm32?
Is it possible to use two stm32 , one for development other one for loading new firmware?
Electronic – stm32 programming stm32 or beaglebone
beaglebone blackstm32
Related Topic
- Electrical – Beaglebone Black — Reading multiple HX711 / Load sensors
- Electronic – How to design an STM32 board with UART over a USB connection
- Electrical – STM32 firmware upgrade (In-System Programming) over USB
- Electronic – How to identify a faulty peripheral before connecting to the Beaglebone microcontroller? Board damaged connecting to ADXL345
Best Answer
The ST-Link is basically just a STM32F103 which will interface to the PC on one side and the MCU under development on the other side and download new code to it.
I haven't seen a firmware or source code available to build your own ST-Link, so I guess it's still closed. But considering that a Nucleo Board contains a ST-Link and costs only 10 bucks, it's maybe not worth the trouble to build one on your own. There are some tries to get a linux driver for a ST-Link here.
The internal bootloader on the STM32F4 is quite flexible and allows different interfaces to be used. There are specifications for each of the protocols available:
There are different ways to get into the bootloader, depending on which chip you use and other boundaries.
One of the easier ways to get there is to pull the BOOT0 pin high and reset the device. Then it boots into the bootloader and the before mentioned protocols are available.
For windows there is a GUI and command line tool available under the name STSW-MCU005 Flash loader demonstrator. That thing comes with source code, so probably you are able to port it to Linux and make it run on your beaglebone. That way it might be possible to skip fully understanding all the protocol details (though that never hurts).
The JTAG protocol is (as far as I know) not freely available, so implementing your own JTAG flasher would require you getting a copy of the IEEE 1149.1 and going on from there. Another option is to get a copy of the ARM Debug Interface Architecture Specification (available for free upon registration with ARM). I haven't looked into it in detail, but it seems to describe the debug capabilities of the ARM cores in great detail. So that might be a better starting point than the IEEE standard.
I don't know if ST has some extensions on the JTAG/SWD protocol, some vendors do this.
That said your best bet is probably the internal bootloader if you want to get results faster. As long as you don't program your controller in a way so that it is no longer accessible.