Odrive 3.5 firmware upload

Support
1

Hi, I recently bought a odrive 3.5 to make a back-driveable robot actuator. My main goal is to just get the odrive working with a brushless motor. It dosen’t really matter if it’s sensorless or not. I read the odrive documentation and when I tried to connect the odrive via usb, I wasn’t able to see it on Zadig. I think I have to upload a new firmware. Searching online, I couldn’t find any guides or posts taking this through. Any help on how I can upload a firmware to odrive 3.5? Thanks!

2

Hi,

To start it might be worth seeing if a USB device is listed under the device manager just to confirm that bit is working.

If its not being detected and you want to reprogram it, you’ll need an stlink device (you can use jtag but it’s a little more complicated). You can find STLink devices on discovery boards, nucleo boards and as stand alone devices. Do you have a stlink board kicking around? If not, they’re pretty cheap at around a tenner.

The pinout you will need to use are:
nRST chip reset pin
SWDIO data in/out
SWCLK clock
GND
3V3 (optional but recommended)

Cheers
Simon

3

Thanks for the reply! Currently I don’t have a stlink. I’ll have to buy one. But can’t I upload the firmware using usb 3.5 and later? Some people recommend to use DFU? Is there any difference between the two? Sorry… I’m a noob at this topic. Thanks!

4

If the device is visible as a USB device then yes as that means the electrical connections and the software are running fine. If you can’t see it at all, then you may have to reflash it using the stlink.

With the ODrive powered up, connect it to your computer and see if a new USB device gets registered. If it does then you can update using the DFU mode, if you can’t even see it (even as unknown device) then we might have to start fault finding.

Cheers
Simon

1 Like
5

I’m being an idiot,

pull the hex file from here https://github.com/madcowswe/ODrive/releases

Cheers
Simon

6

Thanks. Your help was very informative!

7

Oh no! So I have to program the odrive using a hex file and stlink?

8

If you can’t see it on USB then it’s the most effective way to get code in to the chip

2 Likes
9

Thanks! Now I got connection to the motors!

10

Cool, glad to hear it!

Simon