accessing LPC55 microcontroller using blhost tool via SPI

[Samhan]

I'm planning to implement firmware update via SPI communication to LPC55 microcontroller device from Single board computer like raspberry pi. To ease the development process I'm planning to use blhost tool since its already implement firmware update mechanism. 

From this document here , I can see that blhost tools has already implement SPI communication. however I'm unable to use the SPI option from blhost tool that I compile from github here (currently version 2.1.0). from the document, it seems the only version that implement SPI communication is ARM-LINUX version, but I can't find anywhere where I can download this version or its source code. where can I download this version or the source code ?

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Samhan,

I suggest you checking this article Update Firmware in USB/UART/SPI/I2C-ISP Mode

https://community.nxp.com/t5/LPC-Microcontrollers-Knowledge/LPC55-Update-Firmware-in-USB-UART-SPI-I2...

3.3 SPI ISP mode

Hope this will help you.

Jun Zhang

[Samhan]

Hi Jun Zhang,

Thanks for the answer. Based on the link that you provided, does that mean we need to use "MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool" for firmware updates via SPI ? I don't think that we can use this tool in our single board computer since its use GUI.

Is there any alternative that only use CLI command ? we plan to create automatic firmware update in our single board computer to update LPC55 device.

If there isn't any CLI tool, can you provide us with protocol on how the SPI firmware update works ?

[ZhangJennie]

Yes,  "MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool" is the only GUI tool for firmware updates via SPI. This tool acctually calls sequences of commands, for exmample blhost command.

we can see what commadeds are called in log file. See below screenshot to enable it

Then we can try to communicate the target with those command in command line window.

Hope this helps,

Jun Zhang

[Samhan]

Hi Jun Zhang,

Thanks for the answer, since there are no other tools to do firmware updates, it seems we need to implement our own SPI firmware update sequence.

however from your screenshot it doesn't seem that we can see the actual bytes that are sent. is there any SPI protocol that we need to use to do firmware upgrade ? like header of each SPI packet, what sequence of byte needs to be sent, etc.

Samhan

[ZhangJennie]

Hi Samhan 

When you have board setup with the instructions of article, you will see command sequence if programming successed.

below screenshot is ISP programming via UART.  If via SPI, you can get similar as below. 

Please try ISP SPI mode with SEC tool, make sure it works, then check the sequence in log file. You will see how blhost command works.

Thanks,

Jun Zhang