mcbootflash

Mcbootflash is a tool for flashing firmware to 16-bit Microchip MCUs and DSPs from the PIC24 and dsPIC33 families of devices, which are running a bootloader generated by the MPLAB Code Configurator tool.

Microchip provides an official GUI tool for this purpose, called the Unified Bootloader Host Application. Mcbootflash is intended to be a drop-in replacement, with some differences:

• No GUI

• Free and open source

• Written in Python instead of Java

Additionally, mcbootflash can be used as a library by applications which want to implement firmware flashing as part of a larger suite of features. See the documentation for details.

Installation

pip install mcbootflash

Usage

Once installed, mcbootflash can be run from the command line:

$ mcbootflash --port=/dev/ttyUSB0 --baudrate=460800 firmware.hex
  Connecting to bootloader...
  Connected
  Existing application detected, erasing...
  No application detected; flash erase successful
  Flashing firmware.hex
  100%  88.7 KiB |########################################| Elapsed Time: 0:00:05
  Self verify OK

Copyright

MIT License, (C) 2022 Alexander Bessman

Contents:

• Command-line interface
  • Example usage
  • Creating application-specific scripts
• Protocol specification
  • Command packets
  • Response packets
  • Program flowchart
• Library API
  • connection
  • protocol
  • flashing
  • error
• Developer’s overview
  • Code style
  • Testing

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index