LAOS firmware¶

Firmware¶

The Firmware is the code that controls the motor and laser. It is installed on the mainboard. Installation of the firmware on the controller, and configuration of the firmware for your system is described here. To test the hardware, a separate test program is written. Its use is described here.

The firmware uses a simple instruction language that is described here. These instructions are used to instruct the laser to move, cut and mark.

Download compiled versions¶

The compiled firmware file is here (save to your MBED):

https://github.com/LaosLaser/Firmware

The configuration files are here (download, modify for your machine, and save on MBED as config.txt):

http://redmine.laoslaser.org/projects/laos/wiki/LAOS_configuration_file

The MBED uses the latest .bin file (timestamp).

Development¶

These are other version of the firmware that might fix some bugs.

• Development Firmware V0.4 (Dated 11-aug-2012) Fixes the laser power on problem- [Download] and save to your MBED.

Compiling from source¶

It is possible to compile the software from source and make a binary image that runs on the mbed.

1. MBED online compiler (at http://mbed.org): You need an account on mbed.org and a Internet connection.
2. GCC4MBED offline compiler, using GCC. Download at (https://github.com/adamgreen/gcc4mbed)

You can use GCC4MBED on your platform, or use a linux virtual machine to compile the sources. See:
http://jeelabs.net/projects/tosca/wiki/ARM_toolchain_setup_GCC4ARM

Installation of gcc4mbed on linux:

wget https://github.com/adamgreen/gcc4mbed/zipball/master
mv master adamgreen-gcc4mbed.zip
unzip adamgreen-gcc4mbed.zip
mv adamgreen-gcc4mbed-* gcc4mbed
cd gcc4mbed
./linux_install

Then download / clone the firmware

git clone https://github.com/LaosLaser/Firmware.git

Place laser folder in gcc4mbed folder
Run the following command in that folder

make

and copy the resulting bin file to your MBED or LPC.

The compiler (currently) creates two .bin files. (laos.bin and laos-lpc.bin) laos-LPC is (experimental) for the lpcexpresso (not mbed).