Bare-Metal MCU #4 - Bootloaders and Programmers

[@achyuthvishwamithra]

The quality of the content you are producing speaks for the effort you are putting in. Incredible job!

[@talhaakhtar6172]

by far the best tutorial I have found on youtube... precise and easy to understand

[@farzadbakhtiar]

Great video. I’ve been looking for an explanation like this for days because most videos just show you how to use a programmer but don’t explain what’s going on. You’re very good at explaining things. Keep up the great work.

[@youssefadam5186]

Good job ! I did some great projects with AVR MCUs 15 years ago In Assembly and using only MCU datasheet as a reference. I never expected that one day these nice MCUs will have such popularity.

[@Ourfairduke]

Damn, I've learned quite a bit with this series

[@LL-ue3ek]

Complicated stuff made simple and straight to the point. Although the content is not hard, the process of figuring it out could be hard in a sense that it's time consuming. These videos are short cuts that bypassed all the readings and findings and get you to the destination in matter of minutes. Thank you for your efforts.

[@stevrgrs]

These are EXCELLENT videos ! Thanks for taking the time to make them :D

[@jithin_isaac]

clearly explained all aspects of programming the arduino via bootloader & via an isp programmer.. excellent! thanks mitch..

[@nightly_builds]

You rock Mitch, thanks for taking the time to make this series. Valuable content!

[@drpainnuk3d]

Love the series! Thank you!

[@shrikantjanawlekar3747]

Great job Mr. Davis.

[@powerman_nice]

These tutorials are very useful for me, thank you！

[@mathieusan]

finally someone that explains it correctly. Thank you!

[@Zh87119]

Mitch thanks for unintentionally answering something I had wondered if safe to do. In using the Uno to program the chip on breadboard both having separate supplies, only needing to common grounds of the USB PC supply and the battery pack supplying the breadboard.

[@rubempacelli6815]

What a amazing and didactic content! Best regards from Brazil

[@paulvanlit]

Super clear explanations, hats off !!!

[@GCKteamKrispy]

Just my notes: 14:26 - uController programming using Arduino

[@adhipshukla6632]

Quality Content!

[@brianlind1209]

Excellent videos in beautiful clear English! You always make all signal connections after your target has been powered. Something ever die doing it this way? Maybe make the connections first and turn on the power last?

[@mrdimon231]

Amazing series man, thank you

[@bryanwhite7656]

Note that erasing memory (+1m52) is done by setting it to xFF, not x00.

[@pravinraghul]

I accidentally corrupted bootloader of nano, tried to make that work as before using another nano. But eventually fails. But this video makes quite lots of info, great work.👍🏻

[@pravinraghul]

@@MitchDavis2 I watched several other techniques for make it alive. But eventually failed, And do you have any idea of making bare metal programming on Interrupt with atmega328p (uno or nano). That was hard to grasp. Think I could use help.

[@pravinraghul]

@@MitchDavis2 To be frank that's not a big project. Actually making custom libraries. We do have avr libc though. Idea is to learn a different approach apart from Arduino IDE. I am curious to know about using only datasheet as you did. Once done will let you know!!!. Thanks a lots for those replies on interrupt video that will help me and others. Great work 👍🏻

[@robertparenton7470]

Thank You!

[@riskypirate]

Thank you for the video!

[@deltakid0]

How to write your own bootloader? I really appreciate a video talking about this (I think it's gonna be several videos but anyway, I eould really like to do almost all things on my own as you have shown on your videos) thank you.

[@mnavarrotube]

Excelent video tutorial

[@MKRCLabs]

sir do you have some videos om bldc motor control with stm32 code which is in hover board i want to learn code writing for that

[@jackevans2386]

Q_1 Will this tutorial be covering inline assembly language at all for the STM32F4 series of MCU ?

[@S24W2]

Thabk you, ia the programmer and six pin usb to serial adapter the same thing? I see these adapters on amazon?

[@UTube4075]

Hey mate I'm grateful for the content. I've one last question in my head, is there any difference if we use USB to upload code vs doing the last process like using one Arduino to program another Arduino. 😊😊

[@robertoestrella5128]

Hello, how have you learned this interesting topics? Working? Studying? Or reading by yourself in different refences? Thank you very much!

[@yahyaaouledamer1920]

I really enjoyed all your videos I just want to know if it is possiblle to use an arduino uno as a programmer for an stm32 microcontroller Thanks in advance

[@syedalimoajiz1179]

Can Flash memory and EPROM be programmed by Ethernet communication? specifically when we are dealing in Modbus TCP/IP

[@axelbelleris]

So, this is means that I will can to program other models of microcontrollers or just only the Atmega 328??? Is there a way to programming a PIC without a commercial programmer board too? (Sorry for my low level of English understanding). Greetings from Argentina. 🇦🇷🤝🏼🇺🇸

[@PainterVierax]

there are plenty of opensource pic programmers. Some of them use an atmega chip so you don't need an initial commercial programmer at all to make your own. The downside is that such programmer is not whitelisted by mplab so you're limited to FOSS environment with limited chip family support and functionality (eg. sdcc supports only pic16 and 18 series without debugging)

[@testme2026]

Great work thank you, i was wondering why you did not use the ICSP pins using jumper wires ? rather than the standard pins !

[@testme2026]

thank you got it!

[@fernandoperez-garcia7832]

@@testme2026 What's the answer to your question? It seems to be gone!

[@hugopontes4989]

What was the answer?

[@EV_engineer]

If I had to guess, Mitch wanted to demonstrate that ICSP uses the SPI protocol to flash the micro, and that you can connect the jumpers directly to the micro instead of the ICSP, although both methods work!

[@chiraggoyal7637]

Great video. Keep working

[@TRIPLEEJF]

Why is the led in the programmer also blinking in the last example?

[@VndNvwYvvSvv]

Watch at 16:00 again. The connector for programming is shared with the passive LED. He also mentioned that the LED will blink when programming.

[@vijaykumar-ut1ze]

What is flashing of the application

[@Atmatan]

Hi. I'm that person trying to program a program that reprograms itself. Actually, I'm trying to make a recursive chain of multiple architectures that reprogram themselves concurrently.... Is hard...

[@jaggerneill1404]

Dude master out slave in messed me up💀💀

[@channsinhman3720]

How do we know this programer is Arduino as isp?

[@robertyoung424]

how did you learn this without videos like this? Any chance you could provide a roadmap?

[@robertyoung424]

previous to reading data sheet.

[@kebabsharif9627]

Please tell me How to do the same thing with the Texas instruments MCU (like TMS320F2802)?

[@MitchDavis2]

I haven’t used a whole lot of TI microcontrollers yet. I’m planning on wrapping up the STM32 series, and then I’ll probably move to PIC or RaspberryPi Pico after that

[@hamzaiqbal2310]

I am trying to program an STM32 microcontroller without using a programmer, would this method work for that?

[@MitchDavis2]

Take a peek at my stm32 videos :) You need either a programmer, or make sure there’s a bootloader on the microcontroller that allows you to program it in some other way (such as USB or UART)

[@ИгроваяШляпа-д5х]

man, how to program, NEW CHIP ATMEGA8 or 328, i buy NEW CHIP, and my usbasp just cant see this microcontroller. Just new chip without or with arduino. New chip from magazine.

[@ИгроваяШляпа-д5х]

you program controller that already was in arduino, but what with controllers that just from magazines, that just clean. can u help?

[@PainterVierax]

@@ИгроваяШляпа-д5х Could be several things. Other than bad wiring/clock, it could be a defective chip or a fuse disabled SPI port/reset pin. You might have to use high voltage parallel programming with a tool like RescueAVR. Note that sometimes clones come pre-programmed with the arduino bootloader, so you might want to wipe the flash to use it baremetal. All in all any brand new chip from the factory should be recognized in avrdude through ISP or FTDI, at bare minimum just to be able to read its model informations.

[@DhruvsDomain]

If I program the barebones ATMega328P microcontroller using an Arduino UNO board as the programmer, am I erasing the bootloader present on the ATMega328P microcontroller? If I ever want to program the ATMega328P microcontroller via USB (after re-inserting it back onto its respective Arduino UNO board), will I have to burn the bootloader?

[@MitchDavis2]

If you flash the chip using some external device (either a second arduino, or a programmer) it will erase the bootloader by default. You can always add the bootloader back in by going into the arduino IDE and hitting "Tools" →"burn bootloader". Burning the bootloader requires an external programmer as well. Basically, without a bootloader, the arduino doesn't really know how to talk over USB to get a new program.

[@DhruvsDomain]

@@MitchDavis2 Thanks for the reply Mitch!

[@SafetySkull]

Why do they recommend you flash a bootloader onto the attiny when it doesn't have a usb port?

[@MitchDavis2]

The USB port doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a bootloader. A bootloader is mostly just a program that lives on the microcontroller that is able to talk to SOMETHING to get a new program. By default, you can only program over SPI (and parallel i think). With a bootloader, you could program over UART (using less pins than SPI) or something like SD Cards, or even something like ethernet. Basically, any “communication” method could be used to push a new program onto the microcontroller, even if it’s not the native SPI approach If you need the extra space, it’s totally acceptable to go without a bootloader.

[@SafetySkull]

@@MitchDavis2 Sorry to bother you again. (Awesome series btw, keen to learn more about C in general now.) Is loading a program using UART more cumbersome than SPI to justify the hassle of adding a boot loader?

[@MitchDavis2]

@@SafetySkull There's not really a straight forward answer to this since it's highly situational, so I'll give you some idea about past projects I've done, and how I handled programming. Firstly, I ALWAYS put SPI pins/pads somewhere on the board. That way, if I ever mess something up or corrupt a bootloader, I always have a safety backup method to program the microcontroller or re-flash a bootloader. PROJECT 1: No bootloader One project I worked on would take sensor signals and output them over UART. It was a pretty simple project, so I didn't put much thought into it. It was industrial, so I had to encase the entire circuit board in epoxy. I programmed this over SPI, and didn't use a bootloader. I quickly regretted this design choice because once I epoxied the circuit board, I could no longer re-program it because I didn't have access to the SPI pins. It also sucked to know that I had access to the UART pins (since that's what the data output was) but I couldn't reprogram it over UART because I didn't have a UART bootloader on the chip. Project 2: Bootloader caused problems I made a small personal RFID project which just used an RFID reader to activate selections on a vending machine. The RFID reader I used would send the RFID code over UART, so I hooked that up to the UART pins on an arduino. The only problem is that I could no longer program the arduino over UART (or USB) because the UART pins were being actively used by the RFID reader, which prevented the arduino software from pushing new code onto the chip via UART. I had 2 options to fix this: program the chip over SPI, or add a physical switch that disconnected the RFID's UART pins from the arduino so they wouldn't interfere. I ended up adding a disconnect because I didn't want to have an arduino floating around without a bootloader, which would be asking for future headaches.

[@mytechnotalent]

Disregard Mitchel I got it working with the avr-gcc toolchain.

[@MirAclE-mf2pu]

It gives me error invalid signature 0xffffff for atmega 328p U , i tried like so many things but still cant be able to burn the bootloader in this chip through arduino, please need some help with this

[@MitchDavis2]

It sounds like you either have a bad chip, or it’s wired up incorrectly. “FFFFFF” is all 1’s (1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111). This means youre probably not even communicating with the chip. Feel free to send a pic of it if you want a second set of eyes on it

[@MirAclE-mf2pu]

@@MitchDavis2 where to add the pic ? And i tried it with other ics too and all the configuration and wiring like i checked it multiple times, i am using latest arduino ide 1.8.13 on window 10

[@MitchDavis2]

@@MirAclE-mf2pu I like to upload pictures to Imgur.com and post links. Give that a try

[@MirAclE-mf2pu]

@@MitchDavis2 ohk i will do that, thanks for helping

[@MirAclE-mf2pu]

@@MitchDavis2 photos.app.goo.gl/7P9Z8Mk8pSUqKiEJ8 Here are the pics of my connection and the error i am getting

[@aspirohk3558]

Can one make their own bootloader? For Arduino that is

[@MitchDavis2]

Absolutely. If you read the datasheet, you can learn how to self-program the flash memory. Then you just need to come up with a way to receive that program and write it into flash memory.

[@aspirohk3558]

@@MitchDavis2 I was talking to someone about loading os in Arduino like raspberry pi with Kali and he mentioned bootloader and stuff I had to check on, sorry to bother but can Arduino or atmel, at least any, hold say Kali? And thanks for the reply 👍👍👍

[@MitchDavis2]

@@aspirohk3558 I doubt it can hold an OS like kali. You need quite a bit of Ram and program memory to run Linux. However, there’s something called FreeRTOS (free real-time operating system) that can run on Arduino. It’s super light-weight in terms of operating systems, and it mimics how operating systems work by being able to execute “multiple” programs. The operating system executes each of these programs to simulate multi-threading.

[@aspirohk3558]

@@MitchDavis2 nice I'll research on that and see how if resources allow....ooooh what about if I add up extra say expansions like external ram and storage....🤔🤔🤔like in a normal motherboard would it manage?

[@MitchDavis2]

@@aspirohk3558 at that point, you’re basically re-inventing the computer. You have a processor (or microcontroller in this case) at the heart, and then you add external ram, flash/hard drive, etc to make a full computer. Unfortunately, that’s a massive project to take on. You’d have to understand how the Linux kernel expects to access files, and then write drivers to make sure that files make it where they’re supposed to go. Also, I don’t believe Arduino has support for external RAM/flash, which means you’d have to get incredibly creative and virtualize it yourself. The raspberry pi foundation (and beaglebone/orangePi/bananaPi,jetson, etc) have already done this

[@raspberrypie1983]

I love to see the LED on the Arduino ISP blink along the on the Breadboard cuz PIn 13 is still connected to the Programmer Arudino xD 17:40

[@creative27feb]

❣👍🙏

[@pornpimontungmepol8144]

🥑🥑🥑🥑🥑🥑🥑🧇🧇🧇🧇🧇🧇

[@faxanidu3070]

Blah blah blah blah killed me 😂. I just use an ftdi friend

[@faxanidu3070]

Mitchel Davis you are correct it does use TTL I do need something though incase I break my boot loader. I have ALOT of attiny85s. looking forward to fuse burning. PLEASE have an eli5 on it lol. Cause I’ve broke a few already.

[@mostafagaberahmed6657]

I need to ask the one dislike person (whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy !!)

[@MKRCLabs]

hello sir do you have some videos on BLDC motor control with stm32 code which is in hover board i want to learn code writing for that

[@dennis_kabui]

Great Job! Thank you!