Tindie Weblog | JTAG Programming With Pi!

The Raspberry Pi has so many makes use of it’s getting ridiculous. Add one other one to that checklist — OpenOCD helps JTAG programming and debugging utilizing Pi GPIO! When you can wire issues up manually, having this properly laid out JTAG hat makes issues simpler. You’ll be able to straight plug in a 6-pin header, or join jumpers on to the labelled pins. You can even change the voltage stage to three.3V or 5V simply. The board makes use of voltage buffer transistors to securely interface with units which have I/O voltages from 1.65V as much as 5.5V.

JTAG is an effective way to program and debug FPGAs, CPLDs, and plenty of microcontroller households together with all ARM Cortex units. OpenOCD, xc3sprog and UrJTAG are all supported. As soon as related, sometimes you employ one thing like arm-none-eabi-gdb to interface to the goal processor. GDB permits extraordinarily superb management over the processor. You’ll be able to simply look at any a part of reminiscence, program the flash, change registers, single-step the processor, use breakpoints and watch variables, and way more. GDB is a improbable software, nevertheless it does take a little bit of apply to make use of successfully. Many IDEs have built-in help for GDB and might make utilizing it a bit simpler.

The mounting {hardware} isn’t included, however as a result of this board makes use of the usual HAT format, all you want are a number of M2.5 screws and 11mm spacers. The HAT is suitable with all 40-pin Raspberry Pi units, however technically I believe it will additionally work on the older 26-pin units with none points (although the 40-pin header may get in the best way). I nonetheless use and treasure my unique Mannequin B so I prefer to see if fashionable boards nonetheless work with the outdated {hardware}!

If you happen to’re into embedded growth, seize considered one of these boards as a backup to or as a substitute of your typical JTAG probes just like the Segger J-LINK. Use what you have already got for an entire new goal! Now that’s the hacker mindset.