Flashing to the OBC

The following is a simple guide for flashing to the OBC.

There are two main ways to flash to the OBC: using the bootloader or using UniFlash. UniFlash is the more common way so let’s go over that first.

Flashing via UniFlash

When you open UniFlash you should be greeted with the following screen…
For the chip select RM46L852 if you are using OBC Revision 1 or OBC Revision 2. If you are using the Launchpad, select LAUNCHXL2-RM46.
Then for the connection, choose Texas Instruments XDS110 USB Debug Probe
Now press Start and you should see the following screen.
Browse for the file with a .out suffix that you would like to flash and then press Load Image. Usually you will flash one of the following files…
- OBC-firmware.out in the build_arm directory >> This contains the main app to run on the OBC.
- OBC-bl.out in the build_arm directory >> This contains the bootloader for the OBC.
- An OBC example file from the build_examples directory >> This is for when you want to test specific functionality on the OBC (assuming you have written a test file for it and added it to the build script; see Building examples).
UniFlash may get stuck sometimes and throw errors. In such cases, navigate to session on the top red bar and start a new session. You will have to reconfigure UniFlash but it should start working again.

Accessing UART

This is an important skill everyone should know just for debugging. We will go through the process for Windows and Linux.

Base setup

Both Linux and Windows have a program called puTTY available to download. puTTY is a great program to detect serial activity on ports so make sure you download this before proceeding!

Download and open puTTY. You should be greeted with the following screen…
Under the Connection Type: section, select the Serial option which should make puTTY show the following.
You can set the speed to 115200 which is the baud rate at the time of writing this tutorial (August, 2025). Update this rate if the baud rate of the board is increased!
If you know how to detect what USB port is connected to UART you can type that USB port into the Serial line field in puTTY. If you need help, read through the following sections!
You can then press the Open button and there should be a black screen that starts printing out text sent by the board!

Finding USB port on Linux

On Linux the port name will be in the form of /dev/tty*. For example the port could be named /dev/ttyACM0 or /dev/ttyUSB0. To find the port connected to the board do the following…

Open up a terminal without the board connected and type in the following command that will list out all file paths starting with /dev/tty
Terminal window
```
ls /dev/tty*
```
Now connect the board and repeat the same command.
Look for differences in outputs between running the command before and after connecting the board. The /dev/tty file path that gets added the second time around is the port that your board is connected on!
You can type the name of the port you have determined to be going to the board in the Serial line field in puTTY. If you are using JTAG and have to connect two USBs to your Linux system, you will have to experiment and see which port outputs logs on puTTY.

Finding USB port on Windows

On Windows the port name will be in the form of COMXX with XX denoting numbers. For example possible port names are COM1, COM12, etc. To find the port connected to the board do the following…

Open Device Manager and you should be greeted with the following (the image is taken off the web so your window may look a bit different)…
Under Ports try to find the COM port labelled with UART somewhere in it’s name. Once you have found it that is the COM port you will be using in puTTY.

Working with USB on WSL (`usbipd`)

Unfortunately Windows does not pass-through USB ports by default to WSL. Thus, we have to use a utility called usbipd to handle USB device pass-through in WSL. The following are the steps needed to attach/detach USB devices from WSL.

Open a PowerShell window. Within the window type the following command to find the bus-id of the USB device that you want to attach.
PowerShell
```
usbipd list
```
You need to locate the device that has UART in it’s name and make note of the busid that will show in the left most column of the command’s output.
If the device’s STATE shows up as shared, you may skip this step else execute the command. The example is using the busid of 1-1 for demonstration purposes
PowerShell
```
usbipd bind --busid 1-1
```
If the device’s STATE shows up as attached, you may skip this step else execute the command. Again this example uses a busid of 1-1 for demonstration purposes.
PowerShell
```
usbipd attach --wsl --busid 1-1
```
If you ever need to detach the USB port (to use puTTY for example) then you can run the following command. Again this example uses a busid of 1-1 for demonstration purposes.
PowerShell
```
usbipd detach --busid 1-1
```

Flashing via the bootloader

Use UniFlash to flash the OBC-bl.out file, ensuring you have built it for the correct board using the right argument for the -DBOARD_TYPE= option.
From the root directory activate the python virtual environment with the following command
Terminal window
```
source venv/bin/activate
```
Navigate to the obc/tools/python/ directory from root…
Terminal window
```
cd obc/tools/python/
```
Run the app app_update.py script specifying a USB port and the absolute file path. The following are some examples.
Terminal window
```
# On Linux and WSL
python3 app_update.py /dev/ttyS0 ~/orbital-software/build_arm/OBC-firmware.bin

# On Linux and WSL
python3 app_update.py /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/orbital-software/build_arm/OBC-firmware.bin
```
The bootloader sends messages through the UART port so if the first string that the script displays is not ‘Erase Successful’ or the script is takes more than 1 second to start, re-run the script. Hopefully this is addressed in the future!
Wait for the script to flash and the board should jump to app within 2 seconds of when flashing is completed. If not check the error that is being logged to UART and try again!