shraken/gboot

A USB HID Bootloader for Silabs C8051F3xx devices

gboot USB HID bootloader

gboot is an 8051 USB HID bootloader designed for the Silicon Labs C8051F3xx family of microcontrollers. This repo is a fork of the original release distributed by Gabriele Gorla of gglabs (http://gglabs.us).

The goal of this fork is to improve the build process to enable compilation on multiple hosts (windows, mac, and linux). Additionally, external binary utilities and scripts required for binary to hex conversion and file modification have been replaced by python scripts. The last goal is to provide some documentation on the internals of the bootloader and how bootloadable binaries can be created with various toolchains.

The original gboot bootloader was designed around F32x, F34x families but my main focus is on support F38x and EFM8UB2 targets. For flashing the bootloader initially I use a J-Link adapter (EDU or PRO is fine, also J-Link OB the EFM8UB2 works).

Vagrant

A vagrant box is provided for simplified virtual machine building and provisioning. Vagrant uses a VirtualBox virtual machine running running x64 trusty Ubuntu image. The vagrant box that is created contains the required tools and dependencies for building both gboot and gflash projects. Additionally, the vagrant box provides USB pass through and mounts the required JLink and gboot USB devices.

Requirements

1. VirtualBox
2. VirtualBox Extension Pack
3. Vagrant
4. SEGGER JLink Linux x64

The VirtualBox Extension Pack is required for USB 2.0/3.0 devices. Close the VirtualBox application before executing the below commands. On Windows systems, just open the *.vbox-extpack file.

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/5.2.2/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.2.2-119230.vbox-extpack
open -W Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.2.2-119230.vbox-extpack
rm Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.2.2-119230.vbox-extpack

*NOTE: You must fill out the info form and download the latest JLink Linux x64 software package from SEGGER with the above link to flash the gboot bootloader project for the first time. Alternatively, you can copy the hex file to a native OS and program using traditional SiLabs 8-bit USB debug adapters.

Build and Flashing It

Attach the SEGGER JLink adapter to the host system before running the below commands.

Build the vagrant image.

vagrant up
vagrant ssh

This will drop you in a terminal on the Ubuntu virtual machine from which you can build and flash.

To build and flash the gboot firmware for the F380 type with 64 kB ROM size execute the following. See gboot/ReadMe.txt for different build flags.

cd /vagrant/gboot
make FLASH_SIZE=64 VARIANT=F38x

To build and flash the gflash utility execute the following.

cd /vagrant/gflash
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Using It

Once gboot has been flashed, you can

Traditional

The traditional route is provided below for building on a native OS. The vagrant route is the recommended approach.

Requirements

gboot firmware:

1. sdcc 3.6
2. Segger J-Link Software
3. libusb 1.0.21

gflash utility

1. python 2.6.x
2. IntelHex 2.1+
3. CMake 2.8.x+

Building gboot

Type make FLASH_SIZE=xx VARIANT=vv in the gboot directory where xx is 16, 32 or 64 based on the target device and vv is one of basic, dual_uart or F38x based on the chip used.

Building gflash

To create the gflash binary:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Flashing

Type sudo make flash in the gboot directory after building.