Hello,

Can Visual Micro upload sketches via Atmel SAM ICE ?

The Arduino IDE correctly burns the bootloader on my Feather Mo with the Atmel SAM ICE , but it looks like sketch upload must still be done via USB.
I tried Visual Micro's "Use When Uploading" feature: it uploads correctly, but the code then doesn't seem to work - my guess is that the bootloader gets erased in the process. I am not sure if that is the expected behaviour or if I missed something.

Thanks for your help (and for the December VM release)!

Armel

Hi Tim,

Indeed I missed the "Upload using programmer" in the Arduino IDE, and it doesn't work there either, so I will try to fix that first before going back to VM.

If you have any hint as to what might be wrong there, please let me know! 
Thanks for your help,

Armel

Thanks Tim - I finally managed to do everything using just the ICE connection and the Arduino IDE:
1/ selecting the "Arduino/Genuino Zero (Programming Port)" (instead of Arduino of Feather with USB port)
2/ hitting the classic "upload" button, and not "Upload Using Programmer" which would brick the board

The equivalent settings in VM give the same results, so all clear on that side.

So as you said there wasn't much wrong, just the default programmer definitions that lead to a somewhat counter-intuitive behaviour!

Best,

Armel

Hi Tim,

Now that the uploads works, I am trying to debug with the Atmel SAM ICE in Visual Studio, but I have come across some unexpected error messages.

What I did:
1/ added some lines to platform.txt as per http://www.visualmicro.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1478353087/0#0

2/ selected "Microsoft GDB Debugger" in vMicro->Debugger (somehow when I do that no check appears next to the menu line, but it shows in the Output window)

Now when I do Debug->Start Debugging, a window pops up saying "This project is out of date - would you like to build it". If I choose "No" it works fine, but if I choose "Yes", I get the following build errors:

1>------ Build started: Project: Blink, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018: The "VCMessage" task failed unexpectedly.
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018: System.FormatException: Index (zero based) must be greater than or equal to zero and less than the size of the argument list.
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at System.Text.StringBuilder.AppendFormatHelper(IFormatProvider provider, String format, ParamsArray args)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at System.String.FormatHelper(IFormatProvider provider, String format, ParamsArray args)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at System.String.Format(IFormatProvider provider, String format, Object[] args)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.Shared.ResourceUtilities.FormatString(String unformatted, Object[] args)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.Utilities.TaskLoggingHelper.FormatString(String unformatted, Object[] args)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.Utilities.TaskLoggingHelper.FormatResourceString(String resourceName, Object[] args)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at  messageResourceName, Object[] messageArgs)
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.CPPTasks.VCMessage.Execute()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at Host.Execute()
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(57,5): error MSB4018:    at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskBuilder.<ExecuteInstantiatedTask>d__26.MoveNext()
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

Quite similar to an issue reported in another thread, but here with a freshly installed Visual Studio 2015 and the latest VM. If following those errors I accept another pop up's proposal to use the result of a previous build, it hangs and I run into trouble (need to manually kill arm-none-eabi-gdb.exe to erase a temp .elf file and so on).

When doing a Debug->Start Without Debugging, I get the same "project out of date" pop up: choosing to rebuild it leads to the same error messages as above. In any case, the code never gets uploaded to the chip (so different result than doing a "Build and Upload" from the VM toolbar).

So in short: although I can debug my code, there seems to be something weird going on!

Best,

Armel