Modern MCUs like the NXP Kinetis have security features which prevent reverse engineering, but can ‘brick’ devices too. Depending on the settings, it prevents read-out from the FLASH or reprogramming the device. While some of the protection is (mostly) not by-passable by design, in many case the devices looks like ‘bricked’ but still can be recovered. In this article I’ll get you some ways for a (hopefully) successful recovery.
The NXP MCU-Link Pro debug probe includes a LPC804 as an additional microcontroller on the board, including its debug header.
The question is: how to debug the on-board extra LPC804 microcontroller with an external debug probe?
Continue readingWhile developing applications, it can happen that things go wrong. And in my case I ended up with two LPC55Sxx EVK boards on my desk, which seemed not to be usable any more. The issue: the boards were not accessible with the debug probe, because right after main they muxed the pins in a wrong way :-(.
The standard GDB debug connections (both on-board and off-board) were not able to regain access of the board, because the MCU was running into the fault condition pretty much right out of reset.
Luckily, after a lot of trial-and-error, I have found a way to recover them.
Continue readingIf a Cortex microcontroller is unresponsive to a debug connection for various reasons, then this trick might help to recover that device for you. All you need is a debug probe from PEMICRO and a utility.
It is never too early to start thinking about Halloween projects :-).
rendered Eyes with i.MX RT
When I ordered originally the MIMXRT1050-EVK from Mouser, it was without the LCD display (see “MCUXpresso IDE V10.1.0 with i.MX RT1052 Crossover Processor“. I ordered the LCD for the board soon after writing that article, but I was too busy with the university lectures and exams to get a hand on it. Finally I have spent a few hours at night and I proudly can say: the display is working 🙂
Questions from students or readers of my articles are a great source for all kind of articles. And here is the ‘question of this week’: “What is realtime debugging”?
It’s a good question because the topic of ‘realtime’ and ‘debugging’ was a topic in the lectures this week. So this question gives me the opportunity to combine the two things of ‘realtime’ and ‘debugging’, I love it :-).
Debugging Setup
MCU on Eclipse 