The avr_boot bootloader loads a program from the SD card on startup. This documentation is specific to Arduino IDE boards installation. The main (source) documentation is located here.
- Installation
- Using the Board Menu Entries
- Burning the Bootloader
- Uploading Your Sketch
- Troubleshooting
- Supported Microcontrollers
- Supported Boards
- Acknowledgments
WARNING: avr_boot is not compatible with Arduino AVR Boards 1.6.12(included with Arduino IDE 1.6.10).
- Download the avr_boot files here: https://github.com/LocoConnect/LCBootloader
- Extract the .zip file.
- Move the avr_boot folder into the packages folder. For Arduino IDE 2.0 on Windows this is: %LOCALAPPDATA%\arduino15\packages
- If the Arduino IDE is running then restart it.
After installing avr_boot for LocoConnect a new board is added to the LocoConnect section of the Tools > Board menu. When this board is selected additional menus will appear under the Tools menu.
Whenever you change a setting in these menus you need to Burn Bootloader to reconfigure your board.
BOD stands for Brown-out Detection. This feature is intended to avoid improper operation caused by insufficient supply voltage. If the supply voltage drops below the BOD value then the microcontroller is reset.
Displays a list of board models for your Board menu selection. You don't need to re-burn the bootloader after changing the model menu selection
The SD CS pin may be connected to different Arduino pins depending on which shield you are using or your wiring preference if not using a shield.
- Ethernet Shield: 4
- Arduino Ethernet: 4
- Seeed SD card shield: 4
- SparkFun MicroSD Shield: 8
- Adafruit Data Logger Shield: 10
Note that ATmel has recently removed full swing support from some of the AVR models(http://img.digikey.com/Retractions/WC154601%20-%20PCN-12-23-2015.pdf).
- 16MHz External Low Power - This is usually the best setting to use for commercially produced boards that run at 16MHz as it will decrease power usage compared to the 16MHz Full Swing setting.
- 16MHz External Full Swing - This setting can be used for breadboard or homemade 16MHz boards where the 16MHz Low Power setting causes unreliability due to electrical interference.
To burn the bootloader, you will need an ISP(in-system programmer). After you have connected the Arduino board and the programmer to your computer navigate to the Tools > Board menu and select the correct board. Then go to Tools > Programmer and select the programmer you are using. In case you are using Arduino as ISP, make sure that the selected port in the Tools > Serial Port menu refers to the Arduino as ISP board and not the board that you want to burn the bootloader on. Now, just launch the Tools > Burn Bootloader command and wait until the operation completes. You will no longer be able to upload sketches to your board using USB once the avr_boot bootloader is installed. To go back to normal uploading repeat the bootloader burning process with a non-avr_boot board selected.
- In Arduino IDE go to File > Preferences and check "Show verbose output during compiliation"
- compile LocoConnect sketch and find the location of your /tmp/buildxxx/lococonnect.cpp.hex
- make bin file: avr-objcopy -I ihex -O binary sketch.cpp.hex LCONNECT.BIN
- copy the file into the root of an SD (FAT32)
- put it into the SD slot and connect the SD card to the SPI interface of your LocoConnect board
- reset it
- it might already have happend!
java.lang.NullPointerException(Arduino IDE 1.6.5-r5 or previous) orpanic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference(Arduino IDE 1.6.6 or higher) error while compiling/uploading with ATmega1284/P or ATmega644/P/A/PA.- Your Pinout menu selection requires the installation of Mighty 1284P or MightyCore. Either install it or choose a different pinout.
- avr_boot boards don't appear in the Tools > Board menu after manual installation.
- avr_boot requires Arduino IDE 1.6.1 or higher.
avrdude: verification error; content mismatcherror during lock verification while burning bootloader with AVRISP mkII or other STK500v2 programmer.- avr_boot is not compatible with Arduino AVR Boards 1.6.12. Please use any other version of Arduino AVR Boards.
- avr_boot entry doesn't appear in Boards Manager when using Arduino IDE 1.6.6.
- Close Boards Manager and then open it again.
Bootloader file specified but missingwarning when compiling when using Arduino IDE 1.6.6.- Please ignore, this is caused by a bug in that IDE version and will not cause any problems.
Warning: This core does not support exporting sketches. Please consider upgrading it or contacting its authorwhen doing Sketch > Export compiled Binary while using Arduino IDE 1.6.5 on Windows.- This is caused by a bug in Arduino IDE 1.6.5. Please either use the alternate method of obtaining the compiled .hex file or upgrade to a more recent version of the Arduino IDE.
avrdude: AVR Part "build.mcu" not found.oravr-g++: error: unrecognized argument in option '-mmcu=build.mcu'.- avr_boot requires Arduino IDE 1.6.1 or greater,
avrdude: AVR Part "atmega644a" not found.or similar error during Upload or Upload Using Programmer to ATmega644A, ATmega644PA, ATmega1284, ATmega32A, ATmega128A or ATmega64A.- This is caused by a limitation of the Arduino IDE that does not allow avr_boot's custom avrdude.conf file to be used for these actions when one of the Arduino AVR Boards programmers is selected. Since it doesn't interfere with avr_boot's intended usage for SD card program uploads, the issue will not be fixed at this time. You can solve the issue by installing MightyCore or ATTinyCore and selecting the version of your programmer marked
(MightyCore)or(ATtiny)from the Tools > Programmer menu.
- This is caused by a limitation of the Arduino IDE that does not allow avr_boot's custom avrdude.conf file to be used for these actions when one of the Arduino AVR Boards programmers is selected. Since it doesn't interfere with avr_boot's intended usage for SD card program uploads, the issue will not be fixed at this time. You can solve the issue by installing MightyCore or ATTinyCore and selecting the version of your programmer marked
- Using non-An analog pin numbers notation with
analogRead()doesn't work correctly(e.g. 4 instead of A4).- This is a known limitation of Arduino's
analogRead()function with non-standard microcontroller parts. Please use An pin notation or use the equivalent digital pin number(e.g. 14 for A0 on Uno).
- This is a known limitation of Arduino's
- An Arduino core or other library doesn't work correctly with one of the microcontrollers supported by avr_boot
- avr_boot is a bootloader, not a core. The Arduino AVR Boards core and the Arduino libraries are used by avr_boot. These will often work well for non-standard microcontrollers but not always. For improved support of ATmega1284/644/324/32 microcontrollers please use MightyCore. For improved support of ATmega128/64 please use MegaCore. You can use the avr_boot bootloader with the files generated by compiling with these cores.
- My SD card reader's CS line is connected to to a pin not included in the menu.
- Please compile avr_boot from source. You can set any SD CD pin you like.
- I found a bug.
- Make sure you are using the latest version of avr_boot and the latest version of the Arduino IDE.
- Spend some time troubleshooting and doing research to verify the issue and make sure it's caused by avr_boot.
- Do a search of https://github.com/zevero/avr_boot/issues to make sure your issue hasn't already been reported.
- Report the issue at https://github.com/zevero/avr_boot/issues or submit a pull request at https://github.com/zevero/avr_boot/pulls
- Please give as much information as possible, including:
- avr_boot version
- Arduino IDE version
- Operating system
- Installation method(Boards Manager, Manual, or compile from source)
- Which selections you are using in the Tools > Board, Tools > Processor, Tools > Pinout, Tools > Clock, Tools > BOD menus.
- Complete error messages.
- Full description of the steps required to reproduce the issue.
- Please give as much information as possible, including:
- ATmega328P
- ATmega328P based:
- LocoConnect V1.0 and later
- LocoConnectSMD V1.0 and later
- David A. Mellis - avr_developers variant
- Steve Marple - Calunium PCB and Stripboard variants
- Mighty 1284P - Standard, Bobuino, and Sleeping Beauty variants
- MCUdude - MegaCore variant for ATmega64/A, 128/A
- Phillip Stevens - Goldilocks v1.1 variant
- WickedDevice - WildFire v2/v3 variants
- Adafruit - adafruit32u4, bluefruitmicro, circuitplay32u4, feather32u4, flora variants
- SparkFun - promicro variant
- Others listed in the main documentation