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Recovering a Bricked Notecard

In the event the wrong type of firmware was inadvertently uploaded to your Notecard, you may need to manually recover the "bricked" Notecard using a Notecarrier.

Every recovery procedure below works the same way: it forces the Notecard into its bootloader by holding the Notecard's BOOT (pin 65) at VIO while the Notecard is reset. The bootloader resides in read-only memory and cannot be erased, so these steps work regardless of what was previously written to the Notecard's flash memory. Most Blues Notecarriers expose the BOOT pin for this exact purpose.

warning

These procedures cannot recover a Notecard that was erased using the "Full chip erase" option in STM32CubeProgrammer. That option removes factory provisioning data in addition to firmware, and reflashing a firmware binary does not restore it.

Recovering a Notecard with Notecarrier A

  1. Download the appropriate firmware binary for your specific Notecard.
  2. Plug the Notecarrier A into your PC via a micro USB cable.
  3. Add a jumper wire between the unmarked BOOT pin and VIO on the Notecarrier A (see image below for location of BOOT).
  4. Add another jumper wire between RST and GND.
  5. Remove the RST/GND jumper.
  6. Remove the BOOT/VIO jumper.
  7. The Notecard will now be in its bootloader, so you can flash a firmware binary using STM32CubeProgrammer, following the branch of those instructions that matches your Notecard. Skip the bootloader command, as the steps above have already placed the Notecard in its bootloader.

recovering notecard with notecarrier a

Recovering a Notecard with Notecarrier F

  1. If there is a host MCU in the Feather socket, remove it.
  2. Download the appropriate firmware binary for your specific Notecard.
  3. Plug the Notecarrier F into your PC via a micro USB cable.
  4. Add a jumper wire between N_BOOT and N_VIO.
  5. Press the small reset button next to the Notecard (see image below).
  6. Remove the N_BOOT/N_VIO jumper.
  7. The Notecard will now be in its bootloader, so you can flash a firmware binary using STM32CubeProgrammer, following the branch of those instructions that matches your Notecard. Skip the bootloader command, as the steps above have already placed the Notecard in its bootloader.

recovering notecard with notecarrier f

Recovering a Notecard with Other Carrier Boards

If using another Blues Notecarrier (or your custom carrier board routes BOOT (pin 65), NRST (pin 67), and the USB signals to accessible test points) you can recover a Notecard as well.

Notecarrier X, XI, XM, and XS expose BOOT on pin 5 of their 16-pin header. Notecarrier CX and Notecarrier Pi do not route this pin at all, so a Notecard must be moved to another Notecarrier to be recovered.

warning

The BOOT pin on Notecarrier CX is not the Notecard's BOOT pin — it selects the bootloader of the Notecarrier CX's own host MCU.

  1. Download the appropriate firmware binary for your specific Notecard.
  2. Connect your carrier board to your PC so the Notecard enumerates over USB.
  3. Connect BOOT to VIO.
  4. Momentarily connect NRST to GND, then disconnect it.
  5. Disconnect BOOT from VIO.
  6. The Notecard will now be in its bootloader, so you can flash a firmware binary using STM32CubeProgrammer, following the branch of those instructions that matches your Notecard. Skip the bootloader command, as the steps above have already placed the Notecard in its bootloader.