Moteino SAMD 1.5.0 release

There is a major new release for the Moteino SAMD Boards Package 1.5.0. It will popup as an update reminder the next time you restart Arduino IDE, or you can go to the Boards Manager and update from there:

Here are the most significant changes in the SAMD package:

  • All MoteinoM0 and CurrentRanger boards will start shipping with the UF2 bootloader (it’s well worth a read if you’re not familiar with it). The TLDR; is: it supports sam-ba serial protocol uploads as before (via CDC serial, from bossac or via the Arduino IDE) and it also supports drag-drop updates of the firmware as well as the bootloader itself (via a MSC flash drive that appears when the M0 is running the bootloader). Extremely useful if you want to allow an end user to update the firmware and/or bootloader with a newFirmware.uf2 file drag-drop to the “flash-drive” simulated by the bootloader, without the need for the IDE. You could enter the UF2 with a RST double-tap as before, and you’d see a new “flash-drive” on your system (the CURRENT.UF2 is the actual firmware loaded in the MCU – useful to back up before an update):
  • To top off the UF2 awesomeness, MoteinoM0’s will continue to support updates of the firmware from the external FLASH-MEM chip, after an OTA upload via RFM69. The latest RFM69 library release 1.4 has been updated to support this.
  • SerialUSB is now completely removed from the MoteinoM0 and CurrentRanger variant definitions:
    • On MoteinoM0 Serial is now the USB serial, Serial0 is the UART on pins 30/31, and Serial1 is the UART on pins 0/1.
    • On CurrentRanger Serial is now the USB serial.
    • SERIAL_PORT_USBVIRTUAL is now Serial by default
  • You might notice in the MoteinoM0/CurrentRanger boards menu, there are now some options like choosing the USB stack (Arduino, TinyUSB) and more notably the Crystal selection. You can compile for the external crystal (default for MoteinoM0 R1) and “crystal-less” ie. the internal ultra low power 32.768kHz clock). When running without the external crystal, the internal clock is tuned using the USB bus clock which is very precise.

Note that the Moteino AVR boards package is now at v1.6.1. You are encouraged to update both of these packages. Older boards running the sam-ba bootloader may be flashed with the new bootloader included in the 1.5.0 package via SWD programmer. I may even offer to do this for free if you’re willing to return the board and pay for shipping back to you. Please report any bugs or issues in the MoteinoM0 or CurrentRanger forums.

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