Fixing Bricked S5D9 IoT Fast Prototyping Kit

s5d9
#1

As I’ve been experimenting more with the new S5D9, I managed to brick and fix two boards multiple times. As the board is new, the documentation to use the board with different hardware and software is still being built up. I decided to write down my experiences so that I remember what I did and to publish my experiences in case other people have the problem.

Problems

I encountered a number of scenarios where the board wasn’t doing what I wanted.

  • Board LED3 is solid red and does not mount as a USB drive
  • Board LED3 is solid red and board mounts as USB drive, but I can’t load the binary
  • Board LED 1, 2, 3, flashing in sequence green, yellow, red (board is ready for boot binary, but not reading in update.txt)

Solutions

Flashing Board with Factory Image

I documented the process to flash the board with the original factory image and bootloader here. The document has a link to download the most recent factory image as of 7/28/2017. The image was updated last month.

I also realized that I didn’t need to go through all the tests every time. I just needed to connect pins 1 and 2 on J11 and restore the board.

Once the board was restored, the ThingName.txt and original BugLabs (Renesas Data Monitoring) image came back up.

Loading Another Binary Before Restoring Factory Image

With one board, I was having problems getting it to work with the BugLabs (Renesas Data Monitoring) image (after I broke the board. It was working initially). I was only able to use it with Medium One (Renesas Data Intelligence).

Fortunately, I was playing around with Synergy and bricked the board when I loaded a Synergy binary onto the board using the update.txt method. When I restored the board to the factory image, I was able to see my ThingName.txt file again and the board started talking to Renesas Data Monitoring (BugLabs) again.

At this stage, I don’t know why this works. I’m sure there’s another way to do this. However, until I figure out a better solution, I decided to document my process before I forget it.

Update 7/28: I now have an updated factory image and this might resolve the problem. Also, I just learned today that I need to change the memory address, depending on if I use the bootloader or flash an .srec to the board directly with a Segger debugger.

Problems Detecting S5D9 as USB Storage Device
#2

@craig, Thanks for this post. It really helped.
BTW, is there a binary that works for both Data Monitoring, and Data Intelligence? Alternatively, is there a simple way to tweak the Data Intelligence setup based the MediumOne binary, diagnostics-intelligence-s5d9.srec (7/26/2017), to enable the S5D9 sensors to communicate with the Data Monitoring dashboard (BugLabs Freeboard), even temporarily? Thanks!

#3

In the “Put binary here” folder, you can store Data Intelligence binary and flip back to the Data Monitoring binary using update.txt. If you delete loaded.txt and leave update.txt blank, it should go back to the Data Monitoring binary.

I don’t know of binary that can communicate with both Data Monitoring and Data Intelligence.

There is no tutorial on using the Data Intelligence binary with the Data Monitoring dashboard. The source for Data Intelligence is available below.

The dashboard for Renesas IoT Sandbox Data Monitoring is based on Freeboard. That links shows the API as well as the code for Freeboard on GitHub. It would be theoretically possible to build a binary that handled both Data Monitoring and Data Intelligence, but no one has done it yet.

Please feel free to ask more questions.

This is a tutorial on how to build Diagnostics Intelligence from source.

This is a tutorial on binary install.

There are some really good embedded development tutorials for the S5D9 here.

#4

@craig ,Thank you for sharing.
You said "Also, I just learned today that I need to change the memory address, depending on if I use the bootloader or flash an .srec to the board directly with a Segger debugger."
Could you teach me how to flash an binary to the board directly with a Segger debugger? i always occur an error when i debug software,as follows:

I use IAR IDE and SSP 1.2.1,connection mode is SWD

#5

Have you seen this tutorial?

https://codetricity.github.io/s5d9-hacking/synergy/custom/

Is it possible to use e2 Studio? It is free to use. You can download e2 Studio from here.

The Board Support Package (BSP) is here. I don’t have experience with IAR and am not sure how to use the BSP for the board with IAR. You might be able to use IAR if you can figure out how to use the BSP with it.

Renesas made some official tutorials available. Have you downloaded these tutorials?

http://learn.iotcommunity.io/t/s5d9-iot-bsp-and-embedded-dev-tutorials/1359?source_topic_id=1081

do you have a debugger that looks like this?