Compiling and Programming PIC Firmware

About

SpiderSoM and MX10 implement a PIC16F1454 Microcontroller to enable access to UART, I2C and JTAG interfaces.
The firmware consists of a bootloader and the user application and implements the USB DFU protocol to allow firmware updates.

Requirements

• XC8 Compiler
• dfu-util (or similar)

Updating Firmware

Downloading Sources

The source for the PIC Firmware is available on github.

• Open a new terminal.
• Use git to download the sources:

  $ git clone https://github.com/ARIES-Embedded/pic16f1-usb-firmware.git spider-firmware

• firmware/ contains the bootloader.
• example-apps/aries-firmware/ contains the user firmware.
• tools/ contains the 454hex2dfu utility to convert a .hex file to a .dfu file.

Compiling Firmware

• Change into the directory: example-apps/aries-firmware/ and run make.

  $ cd spider-firmware/example-apps/aries-firmware/

  $ make

• If no errors occur a firmware.hex was created.

Programming Firmware

• The PIC firmware uses the USB DFU Protocol to allow firmware updates.
• First convert the .hex file into a .dfu file using the 454hex2dfu tool (needs to be build first).

  $ cd ../../tools

  $ make

  $ ./454hex2dfu ../example-apps/aries-firmware/firmware.hex firmware.dfu

• Then use dfu-util to upload the new firmware to PIC.

  $ dfu-util -d 04d8:efd0 -D firmware.dfu

• The PIC user mode uses USB VID:PID 04d8:efd0 and the bootloader 1209:2002.
• dfu-util first sets the PIC into bootloader and then starts uploading the new firmware.
• The PIC will remain in bootloader until it is reset per powercycle.

Updating Bootloader

• Since the bootloader is write protected, it can only be updated using an ICSP device (ex. PICKit).
• The ICSP pin header on the SpiderBase enables full access to the PIC16F1454 microcontroller.