AMiRo-OS

AMiRo-BLT is the bootloader and flashing toolchain for the base

version of the Autonomous Mini Robot (AMiRo) [1,2,3]. It is based on

OpenBLT developed by Feaser (<http://feaser.com/en/openblt.php>).

Copyright (C) 2016  Thomas Schöpping et al.

(a complete list of all authors is given below)

For details about the license of this software, please refer to the

provided file (./Doc/license.html).

This research/work was supported by the Cluster of Excellence

Cognitive Interaction Technology 'CITEC' (EXC 277) at Bielefeld

University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Authors:

 - Thomas Schöpping        <tschoepp[at]cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>

 - Stefan Herbechtsmeier   <sherbrec[at]cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>

 - Marvin Barther

References:

 [1] Herbrechtsmeier S., Rückert U., & Sitte J. (2012). "AMiRo -

     Autonomous Mini Robot for Research and Education". In Advances in

     Autonomous Mini Robots (pp. 101-112). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

 [2] Schöpping T., Korthals T., Herbrechtsmeier S., & Rückert U.

     (2015). "AMiRo: A Mini Robot for Scientific Applications" In

     Advances in Computational Intelligence (pp. 199-205). Springer

     International Publishing.

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This file will help you to setup all required software on your system,

compile the source code, and use the tools and flash the bootloader

software to the AMiRo modules.

=====================================================================

CONTENTS:

 1  Required software

   1.1  stm32flash

   1.2  gcc-arm-none-eabi

 2  Compiling the source code

   1.1  target software

   1.2  host software

=====================================================================

1 - REQUIRED SOFTWARE

---------------------

The only third party software required are stm32flash and GCC for ARM

embedded devices.

1.1 - stm32flash

To build the tool from source, clone the GIT repository to a local

folder on your machine:

  >$ git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/stm32flash/code

Please make sure that you have version 0.4 or later of the tool. It is

recommend to checkout the following commit:

  >$ git checkout fb52b4d80613b19b28ab82ba9fa415378d00fb9a

You can now build the tool by executing 'make'.

Finally, you must make the resulting binary (stm32flash) globally

available on your system. You can do so by either copying the file to

an appropriate location (e.g. /usr/local/bin/) or creating an

according link.

1.2 - gcc-arm-none-eabi

Various versions of the GCC for ARM embedded devices can be found at

<https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded>. It is highly recommended to

use the version 4.8 with update 2014-q1 since some others will cause

issues. For installation of the compiler toolchain, please follow the

instructions that can be found on the web page.

2 - COMPILING THE SOURCE CODE

-----------------------------

The AMiRo-BLT project is separated into two major parts: target and

host related software. The former comprises the bootloaders for the

three base modules of the AMiRo. The latter is the SerialBoot tool,

which can be used to flash further binaries (e.g. a complex operating

system) to the microcontrollers without the need to connect to the

module directly. Since the programming connector of the lowermost

AMiRo module is the only one accessible when the robot is fully set

up, this enables to update the firmware even for other modules.

2.1 - target software

In the ./Target/Demo/ directory there are three subfolders, one for

each AMiRo base module. Within each of these is an additional Boot/

folder (./Target/Demo/<device>/Boot/), which contains a makefile.

Each bootloader can be compiled by executing 'make' in these

directories.

In order to flash the bootloader to the microcontroller, you first

have to set full read and write permissions to the USB ports of your

system. You can do so by executing the following command:

  >$ sudo echo 'KERNEL=="ttyUSB[0-9]*",NAME="tts/USB%n",SYMLINK+="%k",MODE="0666"' > /etc/udev/rules.d/50-ttyusb.rules

Now connect the module you want to flash directly to your system (note

that indirect flashing is not possible for the bootloader itself) and

run the command

  >$ make flash

If the procedure was not successful, the following hints might help:

  1) Could the makefile execute the stm32flash tool?

  2) Are the permissions for USB ports set correctly?

  3) Is the AMiRo module connected to your system?

WARNING:

never flash a bootloader to another module! Doing so might cause

severe errors and damage the robot.

2.2 - host software

The SerialBoot tool can be built by using cmake. The according

CMakeLists.txt file can be found in the ./Host/Source/SerialBoot/

directory. You can just run the command

  >$ cmake . && make

to generate the binary, though it is recommended to built the tool

out-of-source.

=====================================================================