Things are better with bootloaders, and since this is especially true for microcontroller development boards we decided to investigate the matter for our SAMD ARM T-Board 150059. It took a bit of time to figure it out, but now that we know how, we have reprogrammed our stock with a bootloader. Here is how to use it.

The bootloader in question is provided by Atmel and is described in application note AT07175. Our microcontroller is the SAMD21E18A and to program it through the bootloader you must download and install Atmel’s free utility SAM Boot Assistance better known as SAM-BA.

Connect the SAMD T-Board to the PC with a USB cable and launch SAM-BA. If all is well it will find the board on a COM port (if not, wait until your operating system finishes installing the driver for the board), select it. From the board drop-down list choose the “samd21_xplained_pro”. Leave other settings at their default value and click the “Connect” button.



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