Flash the firmware on TSDZ2 - OpenSourceEBike/TSDZ2_wiki GitHub Wiki

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Wire the STLinkV2 to the TSDZ2 wheel speed sensor cable

The microcontroller chip that need to be flashed with the firmware is the STM8S105. The needed wires from the STLinkV2 are GND, 5V and SWIM, which are to be connected to pins on the plug for the wheel speed sensor cable.

You can either connect directly to those pins, or acquire and set up a plug to connect to that cable.

NOTE: the wires from the STLink should be short, like 10 centimeters, or you will probably get errors while trying to flash. If you need a long cable, try to use an USB extension instead.

To connect directly:

This is quite straightforward using female-ended jumper cables as are typically supplied with the STMLink adapter. See this Youtube video, but in summary

  1. Remove the black plastic ends from one end of the jumper leads by lifting the small retaining tab and gently slipping them off to leave the metal connector underneath
  2. put heatshrink over the metal ends to prevent shorts (not essential, but wise)
  3. slightly enlarge the holes since the motor plug pins are a little thicker than male jumper lead ends, e.g. by inserting a male jumper rotated 45 degrees.
  4. Disconnect your battery before connecting. At least some ST Link clones will be damaged otherwise and will then appear to work, but will not connect.
  5. Connect them in as follows with the flat of the cable plug at the bottom:
    1. GND to the bottom left pin
    2. SWIM to the bottom right pin
    3. 5V to the top pin (note some users have found connecting to 3.3V output pin from ST Link to work if 5V does not)
    4. SWIM_RST to bottom center pin (optional, can help in case flashing does not succeed)

To acquire and make a plug to connect:

You may wish to do this if you frequently flash your motor or dislike the direct pin connection method above. Some options are:

  1. buy an extra speed sensor and cut the sensor from the cable and so you will have a cable with a connector that you can use only for programming - be careful, it appears some speed sensors (eg with Y Splitter for light cables) do not have the wires connected required for flashing
  2. buy a speed sensor extension cable (have not confirmed myself if all wires for flashing are present)
  3. cut the cable to wire the needed wires for flashing and keep the other wires intact - this will work perfectly and you can avoid to buy the extra wheel speed sensor
Here is the list of wires: The connections to STLinkV2 clone:
  • purple wire connect to STLinkV2 RST pin (Potentially optional, did not appear to be needed flashing from Windows)
  • orange wire connect to STLinkV2 GND pin
  • black wire connect to STLinkV2 SWIM pin
  • brown wire connect to STLinkV2 VCC/5V pin (Optional - For those who want to flash without a battery attached)
Example of my wiring:

Download and flash the firmware

  1. Download STVP for Windows here. This software is from the STM8S105 manufacture for flashing the firmware. NOTE: if you are on Linux or MAC, you can use other alternative tool. For instance, on Linux you can use stm8flash.
  2. Download the firmware hex file from here. Pick the file with name TSDZ2_xxxxxxx.hex.
  3. Flash the firmware (Program Memory tab) with the motor controller powered on. Select the proper processor type, both the TSDZ2 controller and the LCD3 display use a stm8s105x6 processor.
If flashing does not work, try turning on the display.

NOTE: sometimes the microcontroller on the TSDZ2 motor controllers stops to working (this can happens when we disconnect the battery or something like that), we can´t program it anymore. The way to recover is by programming the option bytes to some default value.

Flash firmware on Linux

Both the TSDZ2 and the LCD3 use a stm8s105x6 processor.

NOTE: when running stm8flash and if you are using for instance Linux Ubuntu, you may need to run it using 'sudo stm8flash xxx' to get the stm8flash working.

Installing stm8flash on linux

I found that there was no package available to install stm8flash using ubuntu. Instead I installed stm8flash from source. Do something like the following:

% git clone https://github.com/vdudouyt/stm8flash.git
% cd stm8flash
% make
% make install

You should then find that the smt8flash command is available:

% stm8flash
Usage: stm8flash [-c programmer] [-S serialno] [-p partno] [-s memtype] [-b bytes] [-r|-w|-v] <filename>...

Backup existing firmware

First backup everything (just to be sure):
stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -s opt -r TSDZ_orig_opt.bin
stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -r TSDZ_orig.bin
stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -s eeprom -r TSDZ_orig_eeprom.bin

Erase protection:
echo "00 00 ff 20 df 00 ff 00 ff 00 ff 00 ff 00 ff" | xxd -r -p > option_bytes_pwm_n_channels_enabled.bin
stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -s opt -w option_bytes_pwm_n_channels_enabled.bin

Flash firmware

stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -w TSDZ2-vxxx.hex

NB: This did not work for me on linux ubuntu (buster/sid). I got the following error:

% stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -w TSDZ2-v1.1.1.hex
Determine FLASH area
Due to its file extension (or lack thereof), "TSDZ2-v1.1.1.hex" is considered as INTEL HEX format!
30555 bytes at 0x8000... Tries exceeded
%

I needed to convert the hex formatted file above (intel hex format) to a binary file with the following command:

objcopy -I ihex -O binary TSDZ2-vx.y.z.hex TSDZ2-vx.y.z.hex.bin

You can now take this newly created file (TSDZ2-vx.y.z.hex.bin) and use that to flash the microcontroller instead:

stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -v TSDZ2-vx.y.z.hex.bin

Restoring a backup

    # Erasing protection
    echo "00 00 ff 20 df 00 ff 00 ff 00 ff 00 ff 00 ff" | xxd -r -p > option_bytes_$
    # programming option bytes
    stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -s opt -w TSDZ_orig_opt.bin
    # programming eeprom
    stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -s eeprom -w TSDZ_orig_eeprom.bin
    # Programming firmware
    stm8flash -c stlinkv2 -p stm8s105?6 -w TSDZ_orig.bin

Troubleshooting

SWIM error 0x05

Make sure you have the SWIM_RST (reset) pin connected between controller and STLINKv2.

SWIM error 0x04

Check the connection between controller and STLINKv2. A cable might be loose or have bad connection.

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