2.4 stm32flash

So far I have been flashing boards via UART or SWD interface using STM32 Cube Programmer. An open source alternative to flash via UART is stm32flash.

Linux Build and Install

stm32flash project is hosted on SourceForge and the git repository is mirrored on gitlab.

I clone the repository from Sourceforge in my Projects folder.

$ cd ~/Projects
$ git clone https://git.code.sf.net/p/stm32flash/code stm32flash-code
Cloning into 'stm32flash-code'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 1357, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (1357/1357), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (682/682), done.
remote: Total 1357 (delta 912), reused 996 (delta 671)
Receiving objects: 100% (1357/1357), 1.04 MiB | 74.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (912/912), done.

Build on Linux doesn’t show any warnings.

$ cd stm32flash-code
$ make
cc -Wall -g   -c -o dev_table.o dev_table.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o i2c.o i2c.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o init.o init.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o main.o main.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o port.o port.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o serial_common.o serial_common.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o serial_platform.o serial_platform.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o stm32.o stm32.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o utils.o utils.c
cd parsers && make parsers.a
make[1]: Entering directory '~/Projects/stm32flash-code/parsers'
cc -Wall -g   -c -o binary.o binary.c
cc -Wall -g   -c -o hex.o hex.c
ar rc parsers.a binary.o hex.o
make[1]: Leaving directory '~/Projects/stm32flash-code/parsers'
cc  -o stm32flash dev_table.o i2c.o init.o main.o port.o serial_common.o serial_
platform.o stm32.o utils.o parsers/parsers.a

I test the newly compiled command first by calling it without argument ./stm32flah then with the serial port where the USB to UART adapter is plugged in.

./stm32flash gives a detailed help of the command.

Calling it with the serial port argument where the board is plugged in and set in bootloader mode gives a description of the chipset detected.

$ ./stm32flash /dev/ttyUSB0
stm32flash 0.7

http://stm32flash.sourceforge.net/

Interface serial_posix: 57600 8E1
Version      : 0x31
Option 1     : 0x00
Option 2     : 0x00
Device ID    : 0x0444 (STM32F03xx4/6)
- RAM        : Up to 4KiB  (2048b reserved by bootloader)
- Flash      : Up to 32KiB (size first sector: 4x1024)
- Option RAM : 16b
- System RAM : 3KiB

I install the command by moving the executable to my local bin directory.

$ mv stm32flash ~/bin

If everything goes well, I will later strip and compress (with upx) the executable.

Regression Testing

As my board has been already flashed using STM32 Cube Programmer, I can perform a simple regression test.

Read the content of the chipset memory as previously flashed.
Flash the same executable using Linux version of stm32flash.
Read back the newly programmed chipset memory.
Compare the two read-outs.

Reading 1 KB with stm32flash.

$ stm32flash -r read.bin -S 0x08000000:1024 /dev/ttyUSB0

Writing the executable in hex format.

$ stm32flash -w f030f4.hex /dev/ttyUSB0

Comparing the memory read-out using od, there is no difference.

Build and Install on Windows

There is a Windows binary that can be downloaded from stm32flash project page on SourceForge. But I did clone and build using both Cygwin and MSYS2 64bit environments on Windows.

The build phase gave more warnings than the Linux version, this is mostly due to stricter warnings in the GCC compiler version.

Usage of stm32flash only differs in the name of the serial device, in my case COM4 instead of /dev/ttyUSB0.

Checkpoint

There is several other Windows applications available on ST.com for flashing STM32 chipsets: STM32 ST-Link Utility, STM32 Flash Loader Demonstrator, ST Visual Programmer STM32. They have been marked as NRND (Not Recommended for New Design), which means they won’t support latest chipsets as they are replaced by STM32 Cube Programmer.

Next, I will write an application which make better use of transmission than hello.