Introduction: Getting Started With FRDM-KL46Z (and Mbed Online IDE) Uisng Windows 10

By Srihari Koripalli
About: Electronics hobbyist

The Freedom (FRDM) development boards are small, low-power, cost-effective evaluation and development platforms perfect for quick application prototyping. These evaluation boards offer an easy-to-use mass-storage device mode flash programmer, a virtual serial port and classic programming and run-control capabilities.

However, they comes with older bootloader (v1.09) out of the box, which effectively works on Windows 7 or older machines. If the board is connected to Windows 8 or newer machines, the bootloader and the application firmware crashes immediately. This can be recovered with a few steps as following.

Step 1: Installation of Drivers

Kindly install the given device drivers (from Drivers.zip) before anything.

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Step 2: Understanding the Status LED

Bootloader Mode:
Blinking at 1Hz: Running normally with no error conditions.
8 rapid blinks and off for 2 seconds: Error

Application Mode:
On: Running normally with no error and no no USB activity
Blinking: USB Activity
8 rapid blinks and off for 2 seconds: Error

Step 3: Obtaining the Bootloader and the Application Firmware Version

  1. Plug the Device by holding the Reset button, the device power-ups in Bootloader mode
  2. Open the "BOOTLOADER" drive, and open the "SDA_INFO.HTM" file.
  3. Check for the Bootloader Version. If it is v1.09, the bootloader should be updated to the latest version (i.e. v1.11).
  4. Checkfor the Application Version.If it is v0.00, the application firmware is crashed. A new firmware needs to be flashed.

Step 4: Disable/stop Windows Services

The issue is that Windows talks to the OpenSDA bootloader and confuses it. This results in crashing the Bootloader and the Application Firmware. Follow these steps to avoid it;

  1. Use the Computer Management Console to disable a couple of services
  2. Disable the "Storage Services".
  3. Disable the "Windows Search".
  4. Stop the "Windows Search".

Step 5: Updating the Bootloader

  1. Plug the Device by holding the Reset button, the device power-ups in Bootloader mode.
  2. Drag the "BOOTUPDATEAPP_Pemicro_v111.SDA" file into the "BOOTLOADER" drive and leave the board for about 15 seconds.
  3. It might be necessary for Windows that you ‘safe remove’ the device here.
  4. Unplug the board/cable.
  5. Plug it in again in a normal way (no buttons pressed!).
  6. Unplug it again and this time plug it in with the RESET button pressed to get it into Bootloader mode. The status LED should blink now with about 1 Hz.
  7. Check for the Bootloader version now (as instructed in Step-3), which is supposed to be v1.11.
  8. The new Bootloader is now aware of Windows 10.

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Step 6: Loading the Application Firmware

  1. Plug the Device by holding the Reset button, the device power-ups in Bootloader mode.
  2. Drag the "20140530_k20dx128_kl46z_if_opensda.s19" file into the "BOOTLOADER" drive and leave the board for about 15 seconds.
  3. It might be necessary for Windows that you ‘safe remove’ the device here.
  4. Unplug the board/cable.
  5. Plug it in again in a normal way (no buttons pressed!).
  6. Check for the Application Version now (as instructed in Step-3).
  7. The device is now compatible of drag and drop of Mbed online's binary files.

And now your board is all set with Windows 10.

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