从Android进行STM32设备固件升级（DFU / DfuSe）

Question

I have an STM32F4 microcontroller connected to an Android (4.4) USB Host port. I would like to do a firmware upgrade of the microcontroller from the Android device.

===================                           ===================
|   Android 4.4   | <=======================> |   STM32F405xx   |
|     Device      | USB Host      USB Device  | Microcontroller |
===================                           ===================

Traditionally, STM32 microcontrollers can have their firmware upgraded using the PC tool called DfuSe Utility provided by ST. But I need to do this from an Android device instead. The source for their tools are provided.

Questions:

1. Can the firmware for the microcontroller be upgraded using the standard USB Host libraries from Android in Java ?
2. Or does this need to be done using the NDK , and port the DfuSe source? If so, which libraries should be used to access USB from the NDK ?

Which direction should be taken and how can this be done?

Answer 1

We ended up creating our own solution to program a STM32 microcontroller directly from Android over USB using DFU without using the NDK. We open sourced the project here:

https://github.com/UmbrelaSmart/android-stm32-dfu-programmer

Answer 2

In my project I just program the STM32 as a virtual com port device and define a group of simple communication protocol to erase/write the internal flash of STM32. I think you can do the same for the Andriod but I don't know if there is existing driver for a virtual com port in android.

But no matter how, once you can transmit a byte to and from STM32, you can let it program itself. The basic function of a bootloader is really simple which is just receive data and write them where they should be.