FreeMASTER GUI/Program Development

[C_Zuercher_APR]

Hi,

I'm looking at having a program written which will enable me to flash an ECU and upload calibration files etc. to it via the CAN Bus.

I've been led to believe that one can use FreeMASTER to effectively create the program and perform this flashing operation.

Could someone confirm/deny whether this is true or not please?

Thanks,

Crispin

[C_Zuercher_APR]

Hi Michal,

Thank you for the reply & clarification.

Thanks,

Crispin

[MichalH]

Hello,

FreeMASTER does enable to communicate with a target MCU over CAN and several other communication interfaces like UART, USB or JTAG. But the communication protocol is primarily intended to be used to access target RAM, not Flash. FreeMASTER can be used to monitor target variables and display the values graphically. It can also be used to modify the variables and enable kind of a control panel or even a custom dashboard coded in HTML and JavaScript, hosted in a web browser. FreeMASTER may also serve as a data exchange service between the target MCU and 3rd party host applications like Matlab, Excel etc.

There are videos and webinars linked from this community's main page if you want to get more information.

FreeMASTER MCU driver does not have any Flash-write support, so you would have to implement this on your own. But you can definitely use FreeMASTER to upload data into intermediate RAM buffers over CAN.

One FreeMASTER feature may be handy for your use case. It can parse an S-record file and take care about uploading addresses and data by smaller chunks into RAM buffers so your target application may Flash it to the destination. Let me know if you would like to get more information about this particular feature.

Regards,
Michal

[C_Zuercher_APR]

Hi Michal, Thanks for this info; very useful! So to flash a piece of code via an application, one cannot use FreeMASTER, but to change variables it can be used. Presumably then it also cannot be used to create an executable program either? Thanks, Crispin

[MichalH · Accepted solution]

Hello Crispin,

I'm sorry for a late reply. Yes you are correct. FreeMASTER is not a good tool to create or write the executable program into the target MCU flash memory.

Please mark this question as answered then.

Thanks,
Michal