Hardware Podcasts

The Spark Gap - Episode 17

The Spark Gap · 8 Oct 2014 · 43m

What this episode covers

Hosts Carl and Corey discuss the fragmented landscape of in-circuit programmers and debuggers for embedded systems, highlighting the pain of dealing with incompatible protocols like JTAG, SWD, and proprietary interfaces from vendors such as NXP, Microchip, and ST. They detail the high cost of commercial tools like the SEGGER J-Link and the risks of relying on bootloaders, citing a $58,000 loss by SparkFun on their MicroView Kickstarter due to a bootloader overwrite error. The hosts advocate for understanding memory maps and linker scripts, and suggest building custom programmers or using open-source tools like OpenOCD to gain deeper knowledge of microcontroller internals and avoid vendor lock-in.

Most relevant to

makers and hobbyists

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
NXP, Freescale, SEGGER, Microchip, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, SparkFun, Dangerous Prototypes
Products
LPC Link 2, J-Link, PICkit 2, ST-Link, MicroView, J-Tagulator, Bus Pirate
Chips
MSP430
Tools
OpenOCD
Also
OpenSDA, Joe Grand

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The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by The Spark Gap. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.