Note

This is the documentation for the latest development branch and may refer to features that are not available in released versions. If you are looking for the documentation for a specific release, use the drop-down menu on the left and select the desired version.

Flashing Firmware

Overview

This chapter describes how to flash the CanMV firmware to the development board.

Obtaining Firmware

You can obtain the CanMV-K230 firmware through the following links: Github or Kendryte Developer Community.

Please download the .gz archive whose filename starts with “CanMV-K230_micropython”. After decompression, you will get an xxxxx.img file, which is the firmware image for CanMV-K230.

Note

The downloaded firmware file is usually in gz compressed format and needs to be decompressed to obtain the img file that can be used for flashing.

Flashing Firmware

The CanMV/MicroPython firmware uses the same USB flashing procedure as the K230 RTOS firmware. For the flashing mode, USB driver, GUI tool, command-line tool, and frequently asked questions, please refer to:

K230 Firmware Flashing Guide

This guide applies to Windows, Linux, and macOS, and provides instructions for the following three K230-specific tools:

• K230BurningTool (recommended)

• k230_flash C++ command-line tool

• k230_flash_py Python command-line tool and API

Before flashing, please decompress the downloaded *.gz firmware and select the correct target medium according to the development board hardware. For development boards that boot from a TF card, SDCARD is typically selected; refer to the development board documentation for details.

Startup Device

After the firmware is successfully flashed, connect the development board to the computer. The system will automatically recognize a virtual USB drive named CanMV and a virtual serial port.

Note

Some development boards require connecting 2 USB cables at the same time. If you do not see the corresponding virtual USB drive and virtual serial port, please check whether the connection is correct.

Viewing Devices on Windows

Open Device Manager, you will see the following devices:

• USB Serial Device (COM3) is the REPL serial port for MicroPython, and it is also the interface used by the CanMV Visual Studio Code extension to connect to the development board. Please ensure that the firmware file name you flash starts with “CanMV-K230_micropython”.

Viewing Devices on Linux

On a Linux system, the serial port device will be displayed as:

• /dev/ttyACM0 is the REPL serial port for MicroPython, and it is also the interface used by the CanMV Visual Studio Code extension to connect to the development board. Please ensure that the firmware file name you flash starts with “CanMV-K230_micropython”.