Total Arduino newbie here. I was playing with mBlocks, with the Arduino Uno extension enabled. That extension offers you to "update firmware" which I accidentally did. What exactly is this firmware? Is it just a compiled sketch or does it alter stuff like bootloader or reside permanently in the memory?
1 Answer
Usually by Firmware we understand "a program that was prepared by company that produced the hardware and that is necessary for that hardware to work correctly". I suppose that developers of mBlock are smart enough not to allow people to "brick" their Arduino's. I suspect that ether you updated your bootloader (it's also a firmware) to latest version or simply nothing happened. In both cases your device should be operational. Burning a bootloader onto an Arduino is not as hard as it seems so even if you broke something you should be able to fix it.
answered Sep 27, 2019 at 22:11
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Hm, I thought one couldn't modify the bootloader by just merely connecting it to the PC via a USB cable as you need a special programming device or additionally manipulate the onboard fuses for that? So, other than that, nothing could possibly have been modified, and the board can still be fully used in other projects? Commented Sep 28, 2019 at 4:30