Flashing the Electron

The Archive Kickstarter
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Hi,

I am pondering the new Electron and it looks very cool! I am also really impressed that it is already fully funded. Awesome!

One question, as part of the development process, I am always flashing new code to my Spark/Arduino as implement, test and optimize the code. This is not a problem when using USB and/or WiFi since bandwidth is essentially, but could be with the Electron where it is not.

Is there an easy way to flash the Electron using something other than Cellular? I would prefer to save bandwidth for stuff that matters versus misc code tweaks.

It just occurred to me that a better use case might be to develop and tweak on Photon and then only publish the final to the electron. Is that the recommended approach?

Thank you! I am really excited about the Electron and it has really got me thinking about uses cases.

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I could be wrong but i imagine you will be able to flash over usb via DFU. I would be very surprised if ota firmware upgrades were the only option

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Hey @JL_678! Thanks for the Q. @harrisonhjones is correct–you will still be able to flash the Electron over USB with DFU.

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@JL_687 you’ll definitely be able to reprogram over USB, and also we’re refactoring our firmware so when you push code it’ll only update the user code (a few KB) rather than the entire firmware blob (>100KB). You can also prototype with the Photon, they’ll be as code compatible as possible.

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I am so excited about the ‘system’ vs. ‘user’ flashing, OTAs are going to be so fast.

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To be clear, will this “user code only” update apply to Core/Photon flashing as well? It’s not terribly slow as-is, but every speed boost helps.

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@ssstraub, yes it will apply to the Photon as well. It’s part of the code base overhaul we’ve been undertaking over the last 6 months or so to unify the Spark platform. We’ve been seeing very much improved flash times over Wi-Fi. Can’t wait to share more info when it’s ready :slight_smile:

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It applies to the photon and the electron at present. Although in principle it could be made to work for the core also.

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When talking about flashing, how large would be program memory available for userspace code? According to Kickstarter, the chip has 1MB Flash, 128KB RAM. But I suspect the firmware takes most of it. It would be good to clarify this in KS project too - current Spark owners might know about this, but new people might not be aware of it.

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@lami we don’t have these numbers yet but I would guess that you would have quite a bit more space available to you than either the Core or the Photon. The Core has a lot less memory, and the Photon has the same amount but the drivers for the Photon’s Wi-Fi chip are a lot more complex than the drivers for the cellular module on the Electron. @mdma may have additional thoughts

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