Firmware Configuration and Software Installation

Since the market for new tech is continuously expanding, the demand for electronic products has also been increasing. This means software developments for electronic products are also becoming more and more important. It's one of the most crucial steps in the production of electronic products, and is indispensable.

The rapid development of electronic technology has led to the emergence of various types of controllers (MCUs) on the market, followed by the emergence of various programming software and test software to adapt to the development of different controllers.

At the same time, different products and different applications have different firmware needs to be configured. This not only brings difficulty to the front-end developers but also brings a daunting challenge to the back-end production testing.

Firmware Configuration

The so-called Firmware is the program written in EPROM or EEPROM, and the popular understanding is "solidified software". To put it more simply, Firmware is BIOS software, but it is completely different from ordinary software. It is the program code solidified inside the integrated circuit, which is responsible for controlling and coordinating the functions of the integrated circuit.

Firmware refers to the device "driver" stored inside the device. Through firmware, the operating system can realize the operation of a specific machine according to the standard device driver. For example, CD-ROM drives and recorders all have internal firmware.

Firmware acts as the software for the most basic and bottom-level work of a system. In hardware devices, firmware is the soul of hardware devices, because some hardware devices have no other software components except firmware, so firmware also determines the function and performance of hardware devices.

This being said the configuration of firmware should be a crucial point when designing and manufacturing products. Firmware needs to be built very precisely and carefully. Sure, a lot of devices now allow some kind of firmware upgrade, but there are still many devices that, once used, could only run with that particular version of the firmware.

At the same time, designers should consider the ease of firmware download to reduce the difficulty and complexity of production. In the products that NexPCB has served in the past, we always negotiate with customers and suggest that customers modify and improve the process and operation mode of configuring/downloading firmware, to make the production and testing easier, and speed up the time of product launch.

Software Installation

Whenever we do product development, we always encounter different software that needs to be installed at various stages of product development.

In product design, we need different IDEs to program and debug the microcontroller. During product testing, we need various software to download code to verify our functionality. However, various IDEs also bring huge challenges to production.

We always lean towards using universal and accessible IDEs for development verification and functional testing. This helps us to identify unknown problems easily since niche IDEs tend to have limited resources.

NexPCB is committed to optimizing the manufacturability of products and accelerating product realization. We are constantly seeking the best solution for firmware configuration and software installation. Assuring that the time needed in product development and verification process can be spent as efficient as possible.