+1 Guess that is my one cent opinion :-) Wouldnt be hard to do and is definitely a handy option for a certain group of folks. BTW, and this is a minor detail, I am not so much for polling a pin; the bootloader can look at the serial port for a certain sequence of characters. If it sees them it enters download mode. If it doesnt see anything it likes after that (or doesnt see that sequence), it tries to boot an image. If it cant, it just cycles back. If it boots a valid image, all good. If it boots a bricked image, you just gotta power cycle it. Shouldnt increase boot time too much (which is something to keep in mind imo).
> On Jun 8, 2016, at 12:42 PM, marko kiiskila <[email protected]> wrote: > > I’m convinced that we should have an option for using standalone boot loader > with which you can upload images. These are valid use cases. > > We should make that happen. > >> On Jun 8, 2016, at 11:41 AM, Kevin Townsend <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Why not both? I don't see Mynewt having massive appeal to the larger Maker >> community since the community is very focused on Arduino for a number of >> valid reasons, but it will appeal to a certain type of person in that >> extremely diverse community. It's the right tool for some jobs and not for >> others. It won't replace Arduino and I don't think that is anyone's goal. >> >> Coming from the maker community myself, I appreciate the production focus on >> Mynewt which isn't present in Arduino. Many of the design decisions that >> went into the platform are clearly based on real world experience shipping >> and maintaining devices, such as version control and unit tests and >> simulation. I don't think your average Arduino user is the target here (feel >> free to correct me, and I'm only thinking out loud expressing my own >> perceptions), but more for the 0.1-1% of people who want to move up to >> something they can maintain and produce or sell. >> >> I'm approaching Mynewt primarily as a potential user and product designer >> attracted by a fully open source BLE stack, but I'm also interested to see >> if some of the more adventurous or curious customers take the bait and dig >> into it themselves. Mynewt allows me to design products that are fully open, >> which gives people in the maker community options they might not have with >> proprietary code from the various silicon vendors. >> >> I'm trying to make a case for Serial for both sides of the equation, though. >> I can integrate USB CDC from free (with an MCU that has a USB PHY on board >> such as the SAMD21) to under $1 with a dedicated USB/Serial converter (which >> would be necessary with the nRF5x chips with no on chip USB). Free to under >> $1 de-bricking and flashing is very compelling for a significant reliability >> boost, even on cost sensitive devices, and worth the extra 2-3KB flash. I >> see this solving real world production issues since you are less likely to >> have bricked devices. A nice side effect, though, is that the cheap to >> manufacture HW also becomes more maker friendly just in case people do want >> to poke at it themselves! It seems win win to me, and can solves problems >> for both camps. >> >> >> On 08/06/16 20:17, David Moshal wrote: >>> Thanks Wayne, that's very interesting, I think it helps explain the >>> disconnect here. >>> >>> I understood David Simmons to be suggesting that Makers (like me) are >>> the target end-users, >>> i.e: that MyNewt would be an alternative to, say, Arduino (and why not). >>> >>> However, in your use-case, you are the end-user of MyNext, and Makers >>> are your end-users, no? >>> i.e: a layer lower in the stack. So, in that case MyNewt would be >>> positioned as an alternative to an RTOS (or no RTOS) for embedded C >>> programmers building devices for Makers. >>> >>> So, if I may, I'd suggest that we step back and ask Sterling who >>> exactly he envisages as the end user of this project: >>> Makers, or embedded C developers building devices for Makers? >>> >>> David >>> >>> >> >
