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PyOCD doesn't find Nu-Link2-Me probe on my NuMaker board

Note: Why this question is not off-topic
Some people seem to think this question is off-topic, and it would be better suited for Super User. Please give me a chance to explain why that's not the case.

The question is not about "general computing hardware" but about "embedded software". In the topic of "embedded software", there are tons of questions on StackOverflow related to OpenOCD, a popular open-source tool to connect your computer to embedded software development boards. All these questions are considered totally okay for StackOverflow. My question on this page is about PyOCD - an emerging OpenOCD alternative. So if you vote to close this question, then please also vote to close the 565 (!) other questions about OpenOCD too ;-)

I've got a NuMaker-M032SE V1.3 board from Nuvoton that I'm trying to flash/debug with PyOCD. It's my first time I'm experimenting with PyOCD and with Nuvoton chips. Unfortunately, PyOCD cannot find the device. I'll go step-by-step through the whole procedure. Please tell me what I did wrong.

1. My system

I'm running 64-bit Windows 10 on my desktop computer. I've got Python 3.8 and recently installed the latest PyOCD development version from a cloned GitHub repository (see https://github.com/mbedmicro/pyOCD).

2 Install Microcontroller board

Note: this paragraph is simply to show you the background situation, before I move on to explain the actual problem I got with PyOCD

I've got a Nuvoton NuMaker-M032SE V1.3 microcontroller board:

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This board has a Nu-Link2-Me V1.0 probe on the right side. The first time I connect my board to my computer nothing really happened. So I figured out I had to install the Nuvoton ICP tool that comes with the Nu-Link USB Driver 1.6:

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You can download the Nuvoton ICP tool here: https://www.nuvoton.com/hq/support/tool-and-software/development-tool-hardware/programmer/ When I first start the sofware, I see this:

enter image description here

And I get a request to update the firmware on the Nu-Link2-Me V1.0 probe:

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I click OK and wait for the firmware update to complete. I plug out and back in the board. Windows clearly notices the device:

enter image description here

I can also see the device in my Control Panel > Device Manager. It's listed under Universal Serial Bus Controllers as Nuvoton Nu-Link2 USB:

enter image description here

3 Prepare PyOCD

PyOCD has a few built-in targets. But not the Nuvoton chip I got. So I consulted the documentation at https://github.com/mbedmicro/pyOCD/blob/master/docs/target_support.md and learn that I need to download a pack from http://www.keil.com/dd2/pack/ . That's where I download the Nuvoton ARM Cortex-M NuMicro Family Device Support pack:

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Because I downloaded the pack manually, I know that I'll have to add the parameter --pack="C:/path/to/pack/Nuvoton.NuMicro_DFP.1.3.5.pack" to every PyOCD command, to ensure that PyOCD can access this pack whenever it needs to.

4. Connect PyOCD with Nuvoton board

I believe my microcontroller board is properly installed to go on to the final step: connect PyOCD to the Nuvoton microcontroller board.

First I want PyOCD to find the board. I issue the following command in a Windows console:

$ pyocd list --pack="C:/path/to/pack/Nuvoton.NuMicro_DFP.1.3.5.pack"

Unfortunately, I get the response:

No available debug probes are connected

I tried a few times, both with and without the --pack parameter. I always get the same error message.

 
Note:
I had expected to see something like:

      #   Probe              Unique ID
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      0   ARM CMSIS-DAP v1   000000800a0c882800000000000000000000000097969902

That's the output I get when I issue the $ pyocd list command and I have my SWDAP probe connected to my computer. The SWDAP is the official probe from ARM (see https://os.mbed.com/components/SWDAP-LPC11U35/) that runs the DAPLink firmware (see https://github.com/ARMmbed/DAPLink).

enter image description here

Solution

  • I got a reply from Nuvoton. Apparently the NuMaker-M032SE V1.3 board is not yet supported in PyOCD at the time of writing (02 Dec 2019). At the moment, only NuMaker M252/M263 boards are supported.

    Nuvoton will make efforts to support these boards in PyOCD too, in the future.