5 replies to this topic

[bkmckenzie]

I finally had some time to get serious about playing with my netduino plus, and was SOOOOOOOOOOO bummed to find out that you have to have a non-free and astronomically expensive compiler to build the firmware in any reasonable fashion. I was wondering why anyone was still buying arduinos, cuz this thing is so much more powerful. Now I know why. I can make my arduino look like any USB device I want. What a major bummer. The development tools are so much better, as is the live debugging. But what a limitation, I am seriously seriously bummed. Please someone tell me there is a way to do this without a $3000 compiler or leaving out half the firmware in the build. Bill M.

[Spork]

You could write your own ultra-super-efficient compiler in your copious free time. But seriously: I share your pain. Chris (or whoever): This might be a stupid question, but will there ever be a SAM7X1024 that would let us get around this problem? If not, and SAM7X512 is the end of the line, what's next for Netduino?

[Chris Walker]

Hi bkmckenzie, There is work happening behind the scenes right now, trying to get the latest versions of GCC working...which will hopefully free up some space. You could also maybe get rid of TinyBooterDecompressor entirely, to save a bit of space. This would mean that you'd need to erase your Netduino and use SAM-BA if you needed to erase/upgrade your firmware...but it would save another 40KB of flash space (useful for the larger GCC code). On the USB note...you can actually make your Netduino look like many USB devices as well. It's a bit advanced, and it generally requires using serial for debug and powering via an AC power adapter, but many users do it (including us...our test jigs use Netduino in that mode). Chris

[Spork]

Thanks for responding to the OP, Chris. Unfortunately, I guess my question was, indeed, too stupid to merit a response.

[Chris Walker]

Hi Spork,

Thanks for responding to the OP, Chris. Unfortunately, I guess my question was, indeed, too stupid to merit a response.

We are working on a few things. Stay tuned.

We are listening. Please continue sharing your feedback, as it will help guide and improve hardware offerings.

[bkmckenzie]

Oh yeah, I had read about the using serial for debug, I may go this route. I was rather hoping to either try my hand at changing the firmware myself, or waiting on a version that supports mf & hid together or something (read -- too lazy to go buy a cable for serial debug )

Btw Chris, I notice you respond to virtually every post on this newsgroup. That is a lot of time and effort!! I for one really appreciate that!

I wish I knew something about compilers and especially ARM back end code generation. Seems like a 50% reduction (if some of the other posts I read are accurate on sizes) in code size would be pretty low hanging fruit

Anyway, thanks for the response, I hope they get gcc up to speed soon. In the mean time, I guess living without TinyBooterDecompressor isn't such a big deal. I will have to try that first.

Bill M.

Hi bkmckenzie,

There is work happening behind the scenes right now, trying to get the latest versions of GCC working...which will hopefully free up some space.

You could also maybe get rid of TinyBooterDecompressor entirely, to save a bit of space. This would mean that you'd need to erase your Netduino and use SAM-BA if you needed to erase/upgrade your firmware...but it would save another 40KB of flash space (useful for the larger GCC code).

On the USB note...you can actually make your Netduino look like many USB devices as well. It's a bit advanced, and it generally requires using serial for debug and powering via an AC power adapter, but many users do it (including us...our test jigs use Netduino in that mode).

Chris