I bought a bunch of Velleman Kits of type K8055 and had
a lot of positive experience with them.
Everything works fine including the fact of driving the USB cards using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 self made programs.
Now it comes to the point where I want to make my setup more robust and therefore I need a first aid kit if things go wrong.
My first thought was to use the provided output of the ICD socket on the card (SK9) to save the program from the chip as a hex file and archive it
for later use in case of chip break down.
I could save the hex file, but I saw that the chip has enabled code protection (I was 90% sure that the firmware is code protected but I gave it a try).
And that’s the problem. You cannot reflash the chip when things go wrong.
So you need an unprotected one. In case of failure the now used chip is waste. Also I’m not sure if the extracted hex file is valid (I cannot test it now because I
do not have the same chip available).
Now the question: is it possible to obtain the firmware hex file for the PIC18F24J50 used on the K8055 card?
P.S.: I searched for this thematic in the forum before, but I only found an endless discussion about the philosophy of enhanced firmware and open source variants
with comments what one can and the other cannot (It is not said to dicredit anyone). For me it is important to have the firmware as a backup to be able to react when things go wrong.
Thank you very much in advance for your time and effort.
Sorry for that lengthy and slightly distracting thread.
The bottom line is that Simon’s firmware may or may not be “compatible enough” for your purposes. But you won’t be able to fix any eventual incompatibilities to the original Velleman firmware yourself, should you discover some.
Creating a PIC18F24J50 firmware, that is compatible to the K8055N, isn’t too difficult. However, I respect Velleman’s policy of not publishing their firmware to protect their products against copycats. Therefore I do not publish any 1:1 compatible drop in replacement firmware either, because that would effectively circumvent their policy.
If you want to try to develop your own, I can get you started with a framework and the necessary functional specs for the HID protocol as well as the firmware behavior itself.
I respect your policy and ask then: is it possible, for the stated backup reason, to buy only the flashed chip for the K8055N-2 board?
Dear Jan,
your solution sounds like an alternative to the official line. I could give it a try having in mind that I’m not a beginner in programming stuff. Once the USB stack works fine everything can be mapped as needed. The velleman board provides the ICD socket and I have the right toolchain for development from MikroElektronika.
For reasons to not spam this forum and get the Velleman Support angry, we should find another communication way.
How about you Jan?
Taking this off-line will also give me a chance to practice my slowly rotting German a bit. I am originally from Hamburg, but live in the US since 2001. It starts to show. I sometimes struggle finding the right words in German.
Spare PIC’s are only available when a defective item is returned.
Don’t worry about availability.
As long as Microchip manufactures the PIC, we can supply spare PIC’s.