Lasersaur Firmware

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The firmware is a low-level software component on one of the DriveBoard's chips (Atmega328). It is responsible for all the real-time stepper pulsing. It communicates with the BBB by UART. Initially, when setting up the DriveBoard, the firmware needs to be flashed onto this chip. Some LasaurApp updates also comprise a change to the firmware. If this is the case the firmware needs to be flashed as well. This can easily be done from the web interface's menu:

• Admin/Flash Firmware

NOTE: This works as long as the Atmega328 has an Arduino bootloader on it. The chips from the Lasersaur Store always have one. If you source this chip elsewhere you will have to upload this bootloader with a programmer.

Compiling Custom Firmwares

LasaurApp makes it easy to run custom firmwares. For small changes (e.g. in the config.h file) one click on Admin/Build and Flash from Source builds a new firmware and asks if it should be flash-uploaded. The firmware source code from which it gets built is in LasaurApp/firmware/src. These files can even be directly edited through an ssh session with vi or nano. If you want to get fancy you can also use git to track your source changes directly on the BBB. Happy Hacking!