Firmware



Getting started with Hardkernel ODROID H4+

Published at August 1, 2024 · Michał Żygowski ·  14 min read

First steps with new hardware and preparations for coreboot firmware porting. A quick cookbook where to start and what to do when you get your hands on a new platform and not get your hands or board burnt....

Categories: firmware



Implementing UEFI Secure Boot on MPL PIP4x

Published at April 18, 2024 · Paweł Langowski ·  12 min read

This post explains how we tackled the problem of implementing UEFI Secure Boot on MPL's PIP platforms. The process included testing the platform's compatibility with Secure Boot and integrating automatic image signing into an existing Yocto layer....

Categories: firmware security







Optimizing Firmware Updates: Dasharo Firmware Update Mode for NovaCustom Laptops

Published at November 7, 2023 · Michał Kopeć ·  5 min read

Updating your firmware is an important part of keeping your device secure and reliable. Making this process as easy and reliable as possible is, therefore, a big focus for Dasharo. In this article, we'll dive into the latest feature that makes the update process on NovaCustom laptops a bit easier, more user-friendly, and talk about where we want to go from here....

Categories: firmware



Dasharo Compatible with MSI PRO Z690-A Release v1.1.2

Published at September 8, 2023 · Piotr Król ·  10 min read

Discover the latest Dasharo v1.1.2 release, designed with you in mind. Enjoy the freedom to personalize with the new logo customization feature, and flash open-source firmware safely with Flash BIOS recovery support. Its about making firmware both fun and secure. Dive in to find out more....

Categories: firmware security


Optimizing SPI communication on STM32 MCUs: a comprehensive guide to high-frequency communication

Published at July 28, 2023 · Artur Kowalski ·  22 min read

In this blog post, we delve into the fascinating world of Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) on STM32 microcontrollers (MCUs). Specifically, we explore how SPI is utilized in TPM chips for communication with PC motherboards. We encounter the challenges of achieving high-frequency SPI communication, especially when operating as a slave, and the specific limitations of STM32L476 MCUs. The article further uncovers the limitations of existing approaches in platforms like Zephyr and STM32 HAL. We then embark on a journey to fix SPI issues, improve DMA performance, and optimize the firmware for high-speed SPI communication. Throughout the blog post, we provide in-depth technical insights and share valuable test results. Join us as we push the boundaries of SPI communication and unlock new possibilities in the world of microcontrollers....

Categories: firmware miscellaneous security


Our contribution to coreboot 4.20 release

Published at May 18, 2023 · Piotr Król ·  4 min read

🎉 Celebrating coreboot 4.20 release! 🚀 Kudos to our contributors who have pushed the envelope in firmware security & optimization. Key updates: improved SoC support, TPM security, VT-d DMA protection & more. Check out the blog for all the details....

Categories: firmware


3mdeb Insights: A Look into 3mdeb's Open-Source Contributions

Published at April 27, 2023 · Norbert Kamiński · Piotr Król ·  13 min read

We're thrilled to share our team's summary of open-source contributions from 2021 to the first half of 2023 with you. We've actively worked on enhancing various projects, including coreboot and fwupd. Our involvement has not only boosted the functionality and security of these projects but also equipped us with valuable expertise for our clients. Stay tuned for an insightful blog post diving into our open-source contributions!...

Categories: firmware manufacturing



TrenchBoot Anti Evil Maid for Qubes OS

Published at January 31, 2023 · Michał Żygowski ·  14 min read

Qubes OS Anti Evil Maid (AEM) software heavily depends on the availability of the DRTM technologies to prevent the Evil Maid attacks. However, the project has not evolved much since the beginning of 2018 and froze on the support of TPM 1.2 with Intel TXT in legacy boot mode (BIOS). In the post we show how existing solution can be replaced with TrenchBoot and how one can install it on the Qubes OS. Also the post will also briefly explain how TrenchBoot opens the door for future TPM 2.0 and UEFI support for AEM....

Categories: bootloader firmware hypervisor os-dev security


3mdeb Insights - Winter 2023

Published at January 30, 2023 · Norbert Kamiński ·  5 min read

This blog post will provide an in-depth look at upcoming plans and events for the near future.n the next quarter, we have several exciting events planned for the 3mdeb community. Our events aim to provide a platform for members to connect, share knowledge, and stay informed about the latest developments in the open-source ecosystem....

Categories: firmware miscellaneous


Infrastructure for Xen development and debugging

Published at July 4, 2022 · Piotr Król · Norbert Kamiński ·  5 min read

Back in 2018 at OSFC, we've presented AMD IOMMU enabling for PC Engines apuX (GX-412TC) platforms. Our hypervisor of choice was Xen and we used it to verify the PCI pass-through feature. Unfortunately, the booting process was not exactly stable. In this article, you can check how to prepare infrastructure for Xen development and debugging...

Categories: firmware os-dev security




Open Source Firmware on TigerLake platforms - part 1

Published at April 14, 2022 · Michał Żygowski ·  9 min read

This post describes efforts of building open source firmware for Tiger Lake UP3 RVP platform and the problems faced in the process. Tiger Lake is one of the newest Intel processors for which the FSP and EDK2 MinPlatform has been recently released....

Categories: firmware




Fobnail Token - platform provisioning

Published at March 21, 2022 · Krystian Hebel ·  7 min read

The Fobnail Token is an open-source hardware USB device that helps to determine the integrity of the system. The purpose of this blog post is to present the development progress of this project. This phase was focused on platform provisioning....

Categories: firmware security


A new source of trust for your platform - Dasharo with Intel TXT support

Published at March 17, 2022 · Michał Żygowski ·  9 min read

Do you trust the firmware on your system? No? Then this post is a must-read for you. Get to know what Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) is and how it may help you securely measure and attest your operating system and software running on your machine. You will also hear about open-source implementation of Intel TXT for Ivy Bridge/Sandy Bridge platforms including Dell OptiPlex 7010 / 9010....

Categories: firmware security



KGPE-D16 open-source firmware status

Published at February 3, 2022 · Michał Żygowski ·  6 min read

This post covers the struggles and efforts behind the revival of KGPE-D16. Something that community was waiting for a long time. With Dasharo firmware the platform obtained a new life and sees a new daylight with more security features and improvements....

Categories: firmware security


Porting EDK II to an old Allwinner A13 tablet

Published at January 18, 2022 · Artur Kowalski ·  7 min read

Most ARM SoC's run U-Boot or some custom bootloader. That was the case with Allwinner SoC's, until I started porting EDK II to my A13 tablet. In this post, I will tell you about the current UEFI support status on Allwinner SoC's, my future plans, and how to test UEFI on a compatible device...

Categories: firmware manufacturing



Enabling Secure Boot on RockChip SoCs

Published at December 3, 2021 · Artur Kowalski ·  9 min read

RockChip Secure Boot is an essential security feature that helps tablet, PC, streaming media TV box, and IoT solution vendors secure their devices against malware infecting the firmware. In the following post, we will tell a story about enabling Secure Boot on the RK32xx family, but the lesson learned can be used on other models...

Categories: firmware security


Dasharo for Dell OptiPlex 7010 / 9010

Published at November 26, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  8 min read

Open source firmware may be hundreds of times better than the proprietary one. On the example of Dell OptiPlex 7010 / 9010 we will show you the advantages of Dasharo firmware on this machine....

Categories: firmware


First impression on Nezha RISC-V SBC

Published at November 19, 2021 · Cezary Sobczak ·  9 min read

Nezha is a AIoT development board customized by AWOL based on Allwinner's D1 chip. It is the world's first mass-produced development board that supports 64bit RISC-V instruction set and Linux system....

Categories: firmware iot os-dev


Fobnail vs other boot security projects

Published at October 28, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  11 min read

Have you ever thought about securing the boot process of your computer? No? This post will compare the available open source boot process hardening projects and explain the importance of signing and protection the software/operating system you launch. You will also get to know how the boot process may be secured even further and with the incoming Fobnail security token....

Categories: firmware security



Open Source Firmware on AMD Milan server processors

Published at September 9, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  6 min read

There were times where AMD was actively supporting open source firmware ecosystem by providing silicon initialization code. With a few years break AMD is now trying to support open source firmware again with the mobile platform like Chromebooks. However, the recent achievements have made everybody think that open source firmware is also possible on servers....

Categories: firmware





Dell OptiPlex and coreboot - a story about porting cursed hardware (part 2)

Published at June 1, 2021 · Michał Żygowski ·  10 min read

This post is a second part of the series which tells a story about porting Dell OptiPlex 9010 workstation to open-source firmware - coreboot. What was simple is long past us in the first part of the series. This time we are taking a deeper dive into the technical aspects of Environmental Controller reverse engineering and locating the problem with machine not booting after AC loss....

Categories: firmware














coreboot port for OpenPOWER - why bother?

Published at December 31, 2020 · Krystian Hebel ·  9 min read

You may have heard by now that we are working on coreboot port for Talos II. OpenPOWER already has, nomen omen, open source firmware, so one may ask why bother? We will try to answer that question....

Categories: firmware






GRUB mini–summit 2020

Published at November 2, 2020 · Kamila Banecka ·  5 min read

GRUB mini–summit 2020. This year we cannot miss this opportunity to meet again and face the new challenges of GRUB/GRUB2. So,dear reader, feel invited to look at GRUB with a magnifying glass....

Categories: firmware os-dev security



What features PCIe has?

Published at October 8, 2020 · Marek Kasiewicz ·  7 min read

Introductory blog post to PCIe features. In this article you can read what PCIe capability is and see examples of such capabilities....

Categories: firmware





TrenchBoot: Open Source DRTM. Multiboot2 support.

Published at September 7, 2020 · Krystian Hebel ·  11 min read

This month we will show that not only Linux kernel can be started by TrenchBoot. We also did some drastic changes to the bootloader data format, so if you try to redo some older posts in the future and they do not seem to work, this is probably the place to look for hints....

Categories: firmware security


Booting coreboot on Intel Comet Lake S RVP8

Published at August 31, 2020 · Michał Żygowski ·  10 min read

This blog post shows the procedure of building coreboot for a Comet Lake S platform. Also it describes problems occurred when building and booting the image. As a bonus, few tips and tricks will be shown how to fix/workaround these kind of problems....

Categories: firmware security



coreboot Fundamentals Training

Published at August 9, 2020 · Kamila Banecka ·  4 min read

coreboot Fundamentals Training is the first step of 3mdeb Firmware Training path. It provides solid grounds for further development towards proficiency in coreboot firmware platform enginering. With this blogpost we are starting coreboot fundamentals mini-course....

Categories: firmware miscellaneous





Dell OptiPlex and coreboot - a story about porting cursed hardware (part 1)

Published at June 24, 2020 · Michał Żygowski ·  7 min read

This post begins a new series telling a story of a stubborn firmware engineer who overcame never-ending amount of obstacles to create a Dell OptiPlex 9010 workstation as open as possible. In this series, you will not only read about the adventures which accompanied the work on the hardware but also you will have a chance to learn the way of BIOS developer....

Categories: firmware












Trying to fix ESXi 6.7.0 boot issue, part one

Published at March 4, 2020 · Krystian Hebel ·  14 min read

First mentions that updated versions of VMware's ESXi 6.7.0 installer doesn't start on PC Engines platforms come from the beginning of 2019. Older versions of ESXi worked fine. 'Shutting down firmware services...' is the last line printed before hang or reboot....

Categories: firmware os-dev


Boot Guard - pre-execution firmware verification on Protectli FW6

Published at February 21, 2020 · Michał Żygowski ·  9 min read

This post will not describe how to guard your shoes. However, will definitely introduce you to Boot Guard feature present on Intel processors which allows firmware verification before the first instruction executes. One may call it pre-execution firmware verification. The post will also show you how Boot Guard can work well with coreboot based firmware on an example of Protectli FW6....

Categories: firmware security


GRUB2 and 3mdeb minisummit 2019

Published at February 19, 2020 · Piotr Król ·  7 min read

In December 2019 we had pleasure to meet Daniel Kiper #GRUB2 maintanaer in 3mdeb office in Gdańsk. We discussed various #GRUB2, #Xen, #firmware, #coreboot, #security and #TPM related topics. Results of that "minisummit" was presented in following blog post in form of presentations and videos....

Categories: firmware os-dev security


VMX exit reasons and handlers

Published at January 23, 2020 · Krystian Hebel ·  14 min read

After long break, this is the third post in the hypervisor series. We will see how VMX helps with virtualization of restricted instructions and how Bareflank allows for implementation of handlers for them. At the end we will show how to write and add our own handler....

Categories: firmware




Qubes OS and 3mdeb 'minisummit' 2019

Published at August 7, 2019 · Piotr Król ·  8 min read

In May we had pleasure to meet Marek Marczykowski-Górecki #QubesOS Project Lead in 3mdeb office in Gdańsk. We discussed various #QubesOS, #Xen, #firmware, #coreboot, #security and #TPM related topics. Results of that "minisummit" was presented in following blog post....

Categories: firmware os-dev security





Meltdown and Spectre on PC Engines apu2

Published at May 29, 2019 · Michał Żygowski ·  9 min read

As a continuation the Meltdown and Spectre blog post, this post present the vulnerability status and mitigation with microcode update on PC Engines apu2. Read the post and get to know the open source tools for vulnerability and mitigation checks, as well as exploiting proof of concepts....

Categories: firmware security


Reproducible builds

Published at May 22, 2019 · Krystian Hebel ·  3 min read

Recently we made sure that every build of PC Engines' firmware is built in a reproducible manner. This short post shows what exactly does it mean and why this should be important to firmware developers....

Categories: firmware


Building and running Bareflank

Published at May 15, 2019 · Krystian Hebel ·  13 min read

In this second post of a series, we will build and start our first hypervisor. It won't do much just yet, but it is good to get known with its build system....

Categories: firmware



5 terms every hypervisor developer should know

Published at April 30, 2019 · Krystian Hebel ·  11 min read

This is the first post of a series about developing bare-metal hypervisors. It introduces to Intel's VMX technology, describes interactions between a virtual machine and a hypervisor as well as gives some insight on the control structures required. This post should give some theoretical knowledge base required for the next ones, in which we will implement a basic hypervisor....

Categories: firmware


How to mitigate ROCA TPM vulnerability?

Published at April 17, 2019 · Krystian Hebel ·  10 min read

ROCA vulnerability was discovered (October 2017) in a software library, RSALib, provided by Infineon Technologies. That library is also used in TPM modules. When this vulnerability is present, a pair of prime numbers used for generating RSA keys is chosen from a small subset of all available prime numbers. This results in a great loss of entropy. Details and exact numbers can be found here. UPDATE 2021-10-20: provided new link for TPM firmware updates (old one was no longer working), added info about patch for openssl-1....

Categories: firmware security



How to enable Core Performance Boost on AMD platforms?

Published at February 14, 2019 · Michał Żygowski ·  13 min read

Pushing hardware to its limits In the epoch of efficient and fast processors, performance becomes one of the most crucial aspects when choosing and working with hardware. We want our computers to execute their tasks with possibly highest speeds. But what really influences the performance of our platforms? It’s the processor’s manufacturer design one may say. In this post, I will show You how firmware may boost Your silicon to higher performance level....

Categories: firmware


Enabling ECC on PC Engines platforms

Published at October 16, 2018 · Krystian Hebel ·  14 min read

In this post I want to share some findings about ECC on PC Engines apu platforms. I’ll try to shortly describe what ECC is, why is it so desired, what problems with enabling this feature were encountered and how to test whether ECC works or not using MemTest86. Introduction Sometimes a bit in RAM changes its value spontaneously due to electrical or magnetic interference. It can be caused by background radiation, cosmic rays or recently attacks using row hammering....

Categories: firmware


RTE for automated kernel deployment and everyday use

Published at October 3, 2018 · Piotr Król ·  9 min read

We continue our effort to enable IOMMU and as side effect I have to play with various technologies to exercise reliable development environment which base on RTE. In this blog post I would like to present semi-automated technique to debug firmware, Xen and Linux kernel. The goal is to have set of tools that help in enabling various features in Debian-based dom0. We would like: update Linux kernel which is exposed over HTTP server update rootfs provided through NFS I will use following components:...

Categories: firmware os-dev


Optimize performance in Docker containers used by Embedded Systems Consulting business

Published at September 27, 2018 · Piotr Król ·  11 min read

In 3mdeb we use Docker heavily. Main tasks that we perform using it are: firmware and embedded software building - each software in Embedded System requires little bit different building environment, configuring those development environments on your host may quickly make a mess in your system for daily use, because of that we created various containers which I enumerate below trainings/workshops - when we perform trainings we don’t want to waste time for users to reconfigure the environment....

Categories: firmware miscellaneous


PC Engines APU2 platform validation with RTE

Published at September 13, 2018 · Artur Raglis ·  6 min read

Introduction Remote work is trending nowadays. The best example is the IT industry - purely software tasks with handheld devices allow you to work practically from anywhere. This approach saves a big amount of time and makes a job easier. Unfortunately, as an embedded / firmware developer, there are often situations when interaction with hardware such as a power cycle is required. This leads to a barrier for successful remote work....

Categories: firmware


Xen HVM guests on PC Engines apu2

Published at August 16, 2018 · Piotr Król ·  15 min read

Continuing blog post series around Xen and IOMMU enabling in coreboot we are reaching a point in which some features seem to work correctly on top of recent patch series in firmware. What we can do at this point is PCI passthrough to guest VMs. Previously trying that on Xen caused problems: random hangs firmware cause Linux kernel booting issues (hang during boot) IOMMU disabled - unable to use PCI passthrough Now we can see something like that in dom0:...

Categories: firmware os-dev


How to boot Xen over PXE and NFS on PC Engines apu2

Published at July 18, 2018 · Piotr Król ·  9 min read

From time to time we face requests to correctly enable support for various Xen features on PC Engines apu2 platform. Doing that requires firmware modification, which 3mdeb is responsible for. Xen have very interesting requirements from firmware development perspective. Modern x86 have a bunch of features that support virtualization in hardware. Those features were described in Xen FAQ. It happens that most requesting were IOMMU and SR-IOV. First, give the ability to dedicate PCI device to given VM and second enables so-called Virtual Functions, what means on a physical device (e....

Categories: firmware os-dev


Building EDK2 based firmware for MinnowBoard

Published at April 3, 2018 · Bartek Lew ·  2 min read

Building EDK2 based firmware for MinnowBoard There are some options to build firmware for MinnowBoard, a Bay Trail based SBC (Single Board Computer) from Intel. We prefer usually coreboot as simplest and fastest, open source solution, but sometimes we want to have UEFI interface. UEFI itself doesn’t cover whole boot procedure, so its open source reference implementation, EDK2 is not enough to build firmware for hardware plafrorm, we need to provide PI (Platform Initialization) phase implementation....

Categories: firmware


Building UEFI based firmware on MinnowBoard

Published at March 28, 2018 · Bartek Pastudzki ·  8 min read

Building coreboot on well supported platform such as Bay Trail is quite straightforward task, however we need to remember about some things in order to have coreboot working. First of all we need to provide up-to-date microcode and FSP (Firmware Support Package), which are not included in coreboot source tree and coreboot build system won’t complain about it. Second thing is that Bay Trail has TXE firmware on the same ROM as boot firmware so we have to make sure that we won’t corrupt it because it would brick the platform....

Categories: firmware


Minnowboard Turbot remote firmware flashing with RTE (Remote Testing Environment)

Published at March 23, 2018 · Arkadiusz Cichocki ·  7 min read

Minnowboard Turbot remote firmware flashing with RTE (Remote Testing Environment) Introduction Work related to a hardware carries some restrictions which don’t occur when working only with a software. One of them is a limited number of devices. This one may cause a problem with a accessibility to the platform. The limited number of users could slow development and testing. What is more work with a hardware requires a minimal knowledge of the theory of circuits and signals to eliminate platform damage by a user....

Categories: firmware


Flashing eMMC on Hummingboard Edge using fastboot? part 1

Published at March 20, 2018 · Maciej Pijanowski ·  9 min read

Introduction Flashing an eMMC of produced board is one of the crucial manufacturing procedures. This post series presents how one can take advantage of i.MX6 features and open source tools to prepare themselves with quite robust and easy to use process. Target reference platform is Hummingboard Edge. General concept The general concept is inspired by this great bootlin (former FreeElectrons) post: I’ve run into some issues while trying to do something similar on Hummingbard Edge, so decided to share my experience....

Categories: app-dev firmware


Flashing MinnowBoard Turbot with Raspberry Pi Zero W

Published at November 20, 2017 · Piotr Król ·  10 min read

Recently we started preparation of coreboot training for one of our customers. Our platform of choice for that training is MinnowBoard Turbot. There are couple reasons for that: During training we can show recent firmware trends - despite we don’t like blobs (FSP, AGESA, PSP, ME etc.) and bloated designs (UEFI) we cannot escape reality and have to show customers how to deal with those components. MinnowBoard Turbot use couple of them, but also supports coreboot....

Categories: firmware


UEFI/EDK II CorebootPayloadPkg on PC Engines apu2

Published at November 3, 2017 · Piotr Król ·  9 min read

Recently we were reached by person interested in running CoreOS on apu2. CoreOS is a very interesting system from security point of view. It was created to support containers and scalability out of the box. Unfortunately it requires firmware supporting GPT. At that point I was not sure if I can utilize GRUB GPT support on apu2, but this led to other questions: Is it possible to boot UEFI-aware OS on PC Engines apux boards?...

Categories: firmware


PC Engines apu2 python Robot Framework validation automation

Published at November 2, 2017 · Piotr Król ·  8 min read

Recently we attended ECC2017 conference. One of topics that we considered was a system for development and validation automation. Unfortunately this talk was not accepted, but we present some research below and plan to provide more soon. As maintainers of PC Engines platforms in coreboot we debug and fix quite a lot of bugs, but to take full responsibility for our code everything should be validated each time we do release....

Categories: firmware


How to handle a DHT22 sensor using ARM mbed OS?

Published at August 1, 2017 · Michał Żygowski ·  8 min read

Recently I have encountered with temperature and humidity measurements using DHT22 sensor. I was developing a driver source code in ARM mbed OS SDK on particular STM32 NUCLEO L432KC platform. Thorough analysis of DHT22 documentation led me to the following questions: Is it possible to accurately measure voltage-level durations during read process? What duration time values should be considered as timeout or/and error? Should I weaken the time restrictions in order to avoid random delays in voltage level transitions be considered as failure?...

Categories: firmware iot


Installing OpenWRT on APU3 platform

Published at May 12, 2017 · Kamil Wcisło ·  13 min read

This guide should be considered as a simple walk-through for using APU3 platform in some generic use-cases. I’m trying to explain how to work with the device and use it in a generic manner. There is a part about the coreboot firmware, which could be used as a reference of how to start customizing it for own purposes. Configuring the hardware At first, let’s figure out some basic requirements for our new device:...

Categories: firmware os-dev


OpenOCD and development environment for Zephyr on NXP FRDM-K64F

Published at March 18, 2017 · Piotr Król ·  12 min read

In this post I would like to describe process of setting up NXP FRDM-K64F development environment under Linux and start Zephyr development using it. Why NXP FRDM-K64F ? I choose this platform mostly because of ready to use guide about using 802.15.4 communication by attaching TI CC2520, which was presented here. Typical wireless stack starts with 802.15.4, then 6LoWPAN adaptation and then IPv6, which carries application protocols. 6LoWPAN compress IPv6 so it can fit BLE and 802....

Categories: firmware iot


Nerves project triage on BeagleBone Black Black

Published at March 10, 2017 · Piotr Król ·  6 min read

Recently one of my customers brought to my attention Nerves. It aims to simplify use of Elixir (functional language leveraging Erlang VM) in embedded systems. This system has couple interesting features that are worth of research and blog post. First is booting directly to application which is running in BEAM (Erlang VM). Nerves project replace systemd process with programming language virtual machine running application code. Concept is very interesting and I wonder if someone tried to use that with other VMs ie....

Categories: firmware os-dev


nRF51822 programming with OpenOCD under Linux

Published at January 22, 2017 · Kamil Wcisło ·  8 min read

Some time ago we bought BLE400 from Waveshare as probably one of the cheapest option to enter nRF51822 market. As our readers know, we prefer to use the Linux environment for embedded systems development. Because of that, we’re following the guide for using Waveshare nRF51822 Eval Kit: icarus-sensors. Kudos due to great post that helped us enter nRF51822 and mbed OS land under Linux. BLE400 is pretty cheap, because it hasn’t got integrated debugger/programmer....

Categories: firmware iot


Zephyr initial triage on Nucleo-64 STM32F411RE

Published at January 14, 2017 · Piotr Król ·  7 min read

As I mention in previous post Zephyr RTOS is an interesting initiative started by Intel, NXP and couple other strong organizations. With so well founded background future for this RTOS should look bright and I think it will quickly became important player on IoT arena. Because of that it is worth to dig little bit deeper in this RTOS and see what problems we faced when trying to develop for some well known development board....

Categories: firmware iot


Failure of ECC508A crypto coprocessor initial triage with SAM G55 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit

Published at November 24, 2016 · Piotr Król ·  7 min read

Some time ago (around August 2016) embedded community media were hit with hype around simplified flow for AWS IoT provisioning (1, 2, 3). I’m personally very interested in all categories related to those news: IoT - is 3mdeb business core and despite this term was largely abused these days, we just love to build connected embedded devices. Building this kind of devices is inherently related with firmware deployment, provisioning and update problems....

Categories: firmware iot security


Starting with Nucleo-F411RE and mbed OS for command line enthusiasts

Published at November 23, 2016 · Piotr Król ·  9 min read

When I first time read about mbed OS I was really sceptical, especially idea of having web browser as my IDE and compiler in the cloud seems to be very scary to me. ARM engineers proved to provide high quality products, but this was not enough to me. Then I heard very good words about mbed OS IDE from Jack Ganssle, this was still not enough. Finally customers started to ask about this RTOS and I had to look deeper....

Categories: firmware iot


SAMG55 + OLED1 Xplained Pro Hello World!

Published at October 20, 2016 · Piotr Król ·  4 min read

AMG55 - recognition in the field If you are considering working on SAMG55 Xplained Pro board here you will find some basic know-how to quickly get you started. What you will need? In this example I will be using SAMG55 Xplained Pro with OLED1 extension board, and Atmel Studio 7.0 with Data Visualizer addon, which requires Windows to work. This however should be similar for other board with EDBG debugger....

Categories: firmware iot


FWTS on ARMv8 platform (HiKey LeMaker version) from scratch

Published at July 25, 2016 · Piotr Król ·  8 min read

This is second post from series about LeMaker version of HiKey board from 96boards Customer Edition family. Previous post focused on describing hardware part. In this post I would like to show how to setup firmware development and testing environment. This post highly rely on 96boards documentation, so kudos to 96boards and LeMaker for providing lot of information for developers. Obtain pre-compiled binaries 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 wget https://builds....

Categories: firmware


Powering on LeMaker HiKey (ARMv8)

Published at May 19, 2016 · Piotr Król ·  4 min read

Embedded Systems Consultants have chance to live in interesting times. ARM expansion touch server market and UEFI coming to non-x86 platforms. Firmware gaining its importance and because handling real development is harder and harder lot of things starting to happen in open source. Big players trying to address security and virtualization issues, what leads to really interesting features in recent SoCs. Couple weeks ago I decided to recover my knowledge about UEFI and take a look how it is implemented for architecture that have its momentum - namely ARM in its 8 version (ARMv8)....

Categories: firmware


Using PlatformIO with TI MSP430 LunchPads

Published at December 8, 2015 · Piotr Król ·  6 min read

PlatformIO is very interesting project that aim to solve very important problem of configuring deployment environment for embedded systems. IMHO good approach is to focus on modularity (various IDE can be used, even Vim) and simplicity (in best case 2 command should be enough to deploy first code). Recent years we have explosion of bootstrapping applications (ie.vagrant, puppet). Most of them seems to follow git-like command line interface and getting a lot of attention from programmers community....

Categories: firmware iot


UEFI Application development in OVMF

Published at November 21, 2015 · Piotr Król ·  3 min read

OVMF (Open Virtual Machine Firmware) is a project that aim is to enable UEFI support in various virtual machines. According to whitepaper various projects have interest in supporting OVFM ie. VirtualBox, Xen, BHyVe and of course QEMU. Why someone may be interested in OVMF ? IMHO the most important reason is that OVMF give ability to develop UEFI applications without using real hardware. This speeds up development cycle by giving ability to start before hardware prototype arrive....

Categories: firmware


ESP-12 update to SDK v0.9.5 and AT v0.21.0.0? noobs tutorial

Published at January 25, 2015 · Piotr Król ·  5 min read

January 23th Espressif published new ESP IOT SDK on their forum v0.9.5. My ESP-12 came with with pretty old version so I decide to update it to latest one: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 AT+RST OK y_RSöfJ[úndor:www.ai-thinker.com Version:0.9.2.4] ready AT+GMR 0018000902-AI03 OK ESP-12 firmware update pin configuration As picture presents in addition to normal operation we have to pull down GPIO0 and pull up GPIO2....

Categories: firmware iot


Power on of ESP-12 (ESP8266)

Published at January 24, 2015 · Piotr Król ·  3 min read

ESP8266 is a SoC made by Espressif. For last couple of months this chip is a rockstar of HackADay and makers community around the Internet. Mostly because of WiFi modules built based on it (ESP-XX family). Rich interface (GPIO, SPI, SDIO, I2C) give those boards potential to be standalone MCU with WiFi capability for wide range of applications. In quantity you can get ESP-01 for $2.7 (for 1kpcs). Of course there is no free lunch....

Categories: firmware iot


Linux, RPi and USB over IP

Published at August 18, 2014 · Piotr Król ·  10 min read

Trying to google ‘USB over IP’ doesn’t give much except some business web pages that give you it as a service. This brings some information about potential on the market IMHO. Main idea is well presented on open source project page for usbip. I really recommend to read USB/IP - a Peripheral Bus Extension for Device Sharing over IP Network technical paper it describe briefly technical details and capability. In short USB over IP is a sharing system aim to expose USB devices from server to client encapsulating USB I/O messages in TCP/IP payload....

Categories: firmware


Coreboot for QEMU armv7 (vexpress-a9) emulated mainboard

Published at August 7, 2014 · Piotr Król ·  8 min read

Recently I came back to look into coreboot. Mainly because low level is fun and skills related to firmware (even coreboot) starting get attention on freelance portals (first odesk job (link removed), second odesk job). I was surprised that under the wings of Google coreboot team start to support ARM (BTW ARM programming is IMHO next great skill to learn). So I cloned latest, code compiled QEMU armv7 mainboard model and tried to kick it in latest qemu-system-arm....

Categories: firmware


0x3: Embedded board bootloader

Published at June 7, 2013 · Piotr Król ·  3 min read

What is bootloader ? It is a program written to bring up more complex code (eg. kernel). On very simple system it can even not exist. Bootloader should prepare all required hardware that kernel or different operating software will need at its start point. It is hard to create cross platform bootloader because of variety of system requirements. Why we need bootloader ? The true is that we don’t :) because we can simply pass kernel and initramfs as parameters to QEMU, but it is not common practice for real development environment....

Categories: firmware


0x0: Intro to Virtual Development Board building

Published at June 7, 2013 · Piotr Król ·  2 min read

Preface There are many reasons why ambitious programmers should care about huge rush in embedded market. IMO there is great potential in it. I don’t want to go deep into this but take a look at all tablets, phones, smart TVs and other cool stuff like wireless in you washing machine or refrigerator (ok this two are right now only a gadgets :) ). This is all embedded. Another thing is that wages of experienced embedded developers are really high....

Categories: firmware


Debugging coreboot in qemu environment - part 2

Published at April 18, 2012 · Piotr Król ·  2 min read

In previous post coreboot was configured and installed. Here we try to establish good debugging environment for it. To create a good emulated environment to debug, research and learn coreboot few tricks are required. First of all we need to know how to run our emulated environment (qemu). What I mean by that?...

Categories: firmware


Debugging coreboot in qemu environment - part 1

Published at March 12, 2012 · Piotr Król ·  2 min read

First of all I use testing version of Debian - wheezy. Clone coreboot repository: 1 2 git clone http://review.coreboot.org/p/coreboot cd coreboot; make menuconfig Configure FILO as apayload and use its latest version: 1 Payload -> Add a payload -> FILO Payload -> FILO version -> HEAD Add verbose debugging messages: 1 2 3 Debugging -> Check PIRQ table consistency Debugging -> Output verbose malloc debug messages Debugging -> Output verbose ACPI debug messages Debugging -> Enable debug messages for option ROM execution Debugging -> Built-in low-level shell Debugging -> Trace function calls Try to build:...

Categories: firmware


flashrom and Shuttle AV18E2

Published at January 6, 2012 · Piotr Król ·  2 min read

During Christmas break I found an old unused motherboard in my home, right away I thought that it maybe useful as learning environment for coreboot. First you need to do with this kind of board is to check if it is possible to flash its BIOS with user space tool called flashrom List of supported hardware can be found here. All you need to do is go through this HOWTO. Be aware that these operations can cause you will not be able to run your motherboard if something goes wrong....

Categories: firmware


How to begin with coreboot

Published at January 6, 2012 · Piotr Król ·  1 min read

About a month ago I started my adventure with coreboot. As coreboot home page says “coreboot is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) found in most computers”. Although I read the majority of materials from mentioned page I still suffered from a lack of basic information that would help me to arrange everything in my head. Therefore, I decided to write a series of posts described my actions associated with this interesting project....

Categories: firmware


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