BLDC Tool upload goes smooth but FAIL (Ubuntu)

ESK8 Electronics
1

I have an odd behaviour in flashing the VESC (firmware version 2.18):

When I flash from the terminal, via stlink usb dongle, with ‘make upload’ I can see the changes I put in the code. But when I flash from the bldc tool, via usb, although the process looks smooth and successful (I point the right bin file, click upload, and see the progress bar reaching 100%), what I have is a VESC with a sort of default firmware on it with no changes at all.

To be precise, as the bldc tool finishes to flash the VESC, the VESC does not reboot by itself as it should.

That’s most likely a sign of failed flashing but…why is that and what can I try to fix it?

2

You should not have tried to flash the VESC. It came preloaded with the firmware and bootloader. You may have corrupted the bootloader if you didn’t connect the st-link correctly.

3

Well…I purchased the VESC explicitly to program it with some custom code so…

The VESC it’s working. I just cannot flash it from the bldc tool. Only via stlink dongle from the terminal.

4

You may want to re-flash just the bootloader and see if it clears up.

Are these the commands you used when flashing the bootloader? Assuming you are on ubuntu.

mkdir BLDC cd BLDC git clone https://github.com/vedderb/bldc-bootloader.git bldc-bootloader cd bldc-bootloader make upload

5

Oh yeah! It worked. I totally missed that bit…somehow, because the progress bar was working, I assumed the bootloader to be present already.

Thanks for the hint!

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