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I am trying to program an Arduino Nano (with an ATmega328P) from an ESP32 that is attached to its UART and the reset pin. I have to do this via the ESP, because the Arduino is supposed to run on its own, detached from a PC (where I could use an existing programmer for it). But its program should be changable, hence, it is attached to the ESP, which is accessible from a web server via Wifi, so that the Arduino can be reprogrammed on request. I almost got the whole setup figured out: The server is running, files can be sent to the ESP, and the ESP can talk with the Arduino Bootloader. The only problem is that I cannot get the Arduino to execute new programs.

The whole procedure goes like this: The server communicates with the ESP, sends the HEX file of the Arduino sketch (which is successfully verified by a checksum, so this part is working properly). Then, the ESP pulls the reset pin of the Arduino and waits for a while before it attempts to talk to its bootloader. Then, it basically does the same sequence of STK500 commands as avrdude.

I really just copied the commands from the avrdude log after executing

avrdude -c arduino -vvvvv -p m328p -b 57600 -P /dev/ttyUSB0 -U flash:w:sketch.hex:i

and skipping query commands like which firmware version it uses etc. So, basically: enter programming mode, erase chip, re-enter programming mode, write the hex file to flash, starting from address 0, moving in steps of 128 bytes (using 1's to pad the last message to the full size of 128 bytes). Then afterwards reading back the file from the Arduino and veryfing that all bytes match (which they do!) and leaving the programming mode (which is the very last thing that happens in the avrdude log). Afterwards, I trigger the reset. I am using exactly the same type of file which I gave to avrdude, and all the responses of the Arduino bootloader exactly match the values from the avrdude log.

But whereas the Arduino just starts executing the sketch after this procedure when using avrdude, in my own implementation it just blinks its LED in a regular interval (when the test sketch should make it blink short, long, short, long etc.). I don't get what's going wrong here. I thought that the blinking might represent an error code, but I couldn't find any documentation about that. I feel like I've searched the whole Internet (including arduino stackexchange), and I even looked at the avrdude source code to check if there's something else done after the last STK500 command, that is not listed in its log. I feel (hope) that I'm very close to having it work and this whole thing just needs like a one-line fix, but I don't know what else to try anymore and would greatly appreciate a second opinion from someone more experienced.

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    In your stated programming sequence, I don't see where you are resetting the AVR chip.
    – jwh20
    Nov 27, 2020 at 12:32
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    You should reset the chip after programming.
    – Majenko
    Nov 27, 2020 at 12:39
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    Sorry, I forgot to mention that. I tried to reset it via the ESP, as well as manually via button. But it doesn't seem to make a difference.
    – programonkey
    Nov 27, 2020 at 13:15
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    @programonkey In that case I think the only remaining possibility is that you are not properly programming the AVR code using your ESP32. At this point you are giving us a high-level description of what you are doing, and that sounds correct, but you are asking for detailed evaluation of your problem but not providing that level of detail. I think your next step to get help here is to post your schematic and your code.
    – jwh20
    Nov 27, 2020 at 13:28
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    Are you using some kind of level shifter? Rememeber the Arduino is 5v and the ESP32 is 3v3, I dont think this should be the problem tho, but can be :-)
    – k.Cyborg
    Nov 27, 2020 at 17:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Okay, by comparing the data packets my implementation sends with those from the avrdude log for the same sketch, I finally found the cause of trouble. I was sending the hex file byte-by-byte exactly as it is read from storage. But of course, the metadata needs to be skipped (i.e. the addresses at the beginning of each line, the magic bytes at the end of each line, and the newline). I added this simple fix, and now it works fine.

EDIT: Here is the preprocessing code from my Python3 script:

import codecs

program = b''
for line in open('sketch.hex', 'rb'):
    program += codecs.decode(line[9:-4], 'hex')
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    so a question without code, an answer without code. nobody could answer your question if the problem was in the code you didn't show. how should this be useful as Q&A? add the code or delete the question please
    – Juraj ♦
    Nov 29, 2020 at 6:54
  • The reason why I didn't post code with my question is that I thought that the error was on the conceptual level, and so I saw no point in posting kilobytes of code before clarifying whether the underlying procedure is actually correct. I did add the code that fixed my implementation to my answer now, though. I do think that this question might be of relevance for someone facing a similar undertaking, if only to compare and verify his approach.
    – programonkey
    Nov 29, 2020 at 17:57
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    now I understand what you do. it would be simpler to work with a binary of the sketch, not with hex file. github.com/jandrassy/ArduinoOTA/blob/…
    – Juraj ♦
    Nov 29, 2020 at 18:02
  • Yeah, that would've been better. But since initially, I didn't know how to go about, I just followed some online examples and tried to mimic the resulting behavior of avrdude as closely as possible. I am smarter now.
    – programonkey
    Nov 29, 2020 at 18:08

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