Problems with the bootloader

Firmware/software/electronics
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crazyprog
Beginner
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 7:58 am

Problems with the bootloader

Post by crazyprog »

Hey Guys,

i have a Problem concerning the bootloader of the crazyradio. As we were working with the crazyradio we accidently flashed the bootloader. Now i am trying to reinstall the bootloader but i am running out of ideas how this could work. I bought a spi-programmer but this could not make a connection between the pc and the crazyradio.
It would be nice if someone could give me an advice or a tutorial how to reinstall the bootloader(i also have a raspberry pi nearby if his is nessecarry).


Thank you all in advance.
arnaud
Bitcraze
Posts: 2538
Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:36 pm

Re: Problems with the bootloader

Post by arnaud »

Hi,

When developing the Crazyradio I used a home-made program to flash it from spi. This program is still in the repos and is using a JTAGkey FTDI-Jtag adapter. I got it to work with other FTDI adapter as well by changing the pinout: https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyradio- ... r/nrfProg/ and http://wiki.bitcraze.se/projects:crazyr ... []=nrfprog

Using the buspirate script on the same wiki page you can flash the bootloader as well if you have a binary image of it.

Otherwise if you have an SPI programmer it should support the nrf24LU1p, the SPI protocol used is identical to classic SPI Flash memories.

Using the raspbery pi is possible (it has the required 3.3V SPI and porting nrfprog to it is possible), but I never got around to do it.

At some point I uploaded the bootloader binary there, it contains all 32k of the flash: http://files1.bitcraze.se/dl/boot24lu1p-f32.bin

Regards,
Arnaud
RomanG
Beginner
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2015 12:28 pm

Re: Problems with the bootloader

Post by RomanG »

Hi everyone,
I wrote a python-script to flash every nRF24LU1P-Chip by SPI. I thought maybe its helpful to someone.

The script reads the Chi-ID, erases the chips firmware, rewrites the Chip-ID and flashes the Nordic Bootloader.
This way it is possible to flash very nRF24LU1P based Dongle and use them as a crazyradio donlge.
This has previously been done by ajlitt on https://hackaday.io/project/6741-crazyr ... heapskates, but he uses a Bus Pirate.
Further it should be mentioned that the script is much faster than the BP it just flashes the needed parts.
You'll find my python-script on https://github.com/RGassmann/nRF24LU1P_SPI_Flashing.

Greetings
Roman
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