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These are the ramblings of Matthijs Kooijman, concerning the software he hacks on, hobbies he has and occasionally his personal life.

Most content on this site is licensed under the WTFPL, version 2 (details).

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My old blog (pre-2006) is also still available.

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Updating the Xprotolab portable firmware on Linux

Xprotolab Portable

I recently got myself an Xprotolab Portable, which is essentially a tiny, portable 1Msps scope (in hindsight I might have better gotten the XMinilab Portable which is essentially the same, but slightly bigger, more expensive and with a bigger display. Given the size of the cables and carrying case, the extra size of the device itself is negligable, while the extra screen size is significant).

In any case, I wanted to update the firmware of the device, but the instructions refer only to a Windows-only GUI utility from Atmel, called "FLIP". I remembered seeing a flip.c file inside the avrdude sources though, so I hoped I could also flash this device using avrdude on Linux. And it worked! Turns out it's fairly simple.

  1. Activate the device's bootloader, by powering off, then press K1 and keep it pressed while turning the device back on with the menu key. The red led should light up, the screen will stay blank.
  2. Get the appropriate firmware hex files from the Xprotolab Portable page. You can find them at the "Hex" link in the top row of icons.
  3. Run avrdude, for both the application and EEPROM contents:

    sudo avrdude -c flip2 -p x32a4u -U application:w:xprotolab-p.hex:i
    sudo avrdude -c flip2 -p x32a4u -U eep:w:xprotolab-p.eep:i
    

    I'm running under sudo, since this needs raw USB access to the USB device. Alternatively, you can set up udev to offer access to your regular user (like I did for the JTAGICE3), but that's probably too much effort just for a one-off firmware update.

  4. Done!

Note that you have to use avrdude version 6.1 or above, older versions don't support the FLIP protocol.

 
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