Post : Drag and drop code onto this ARM dev board
URL : http://hackaday.com/2012/09/12/drag-and-drop-code-onto-this-arm-dev-board/
Posted : September 12, 2012 at 6:00 am
Author : Brian Benchoff
Tags : arm, bootloader, usb
Categories : ARM

http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/arrrrm.jpg

On the continuing list of homebrew ARM dev boards we've seen over the past few months, [Squonk42]'s USBug is one of the best we've seen (http://squonk42.github.com/USBug/) . Like many other ARM boards, it breaks out a member of the Cortex M0/M3 family into a 40-pin DIP, but unlike all the others, [Squonk] designed it so you can drag and drop code onto the microcontroller just like a USB thumb drive.

[Squonk]'s trick relies on a certain breed of NXP LPC11xx/LPC13xx microcontrollers. These chips feature a ROM-based mass storage, meaning you can compile code on your desktop and simply shuffle it over to the USBug, no external programmer required. Here's the relevant app note (http://www.nxp.com/documents/application_note/AN10905_lpc1300_usbmemrom.zip) (PDF in a zip file. Double whammy).

Of course, the USBug features the I/O you'd generally expect from the current crop of Cortex-M3 devices, all while serving up 64 kB of Flash and 12 kB of RAM.

[Squonk] says he'd like to put the USBug on Kickstarter, but unfortunately he's not a US citizen. In the spirit of Open Hardware, perhaps some maker-based electronics manufacturer will pick up where [Squonk] is forced to leave off.

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