Silicon Enablement Tool (pydap-link)

A Python utility I wrote to automate the tedious parts of SoC Board Bring-up and Silicon Validation.

In my day-to-day work with embedded systems, I often need to verify if a new chip (or "first silicon") is alive without firing up a heavy IDE like Keil or IAR. This tool wraps pyOCD to let me quickly check the heartbeat of an ARM Cortex-M core, verify the bus, and flash firmware directly from the terminal.

⚡ Why I Built This

Manually checking registers like CPUID (0xE000ED00) or verifying RAM access via a debugger GUI is slow and error-prone. I needed a scriptable way to:

1. Detect the Core: Instantly see if the chip is an M0+, M4, or M7.
2. Verify the Bus: Check if the AHB-AP is responding before I even try to load code.
3. Automate Flashing: Flash binaries across multiple boards without clicking through menus.

🚀 What It Does

• Auto-Discovery: Finds the connected debug probe (PICkit 5, DAPLink, ST-Link) and identifies the target.
• Sanity Checks: Halts the core and reads the CPUID to confirm the hardware is stable.
• Memory Test: Writes a pattern (0xDEADBEEF) to SRAM and reads it back to ensure the memory controller is working.
• Flash & Go: Handles the erase-program-verify cycle for binary firmware files.

🛠️ Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+
• A debug probe (I tested this with a PICkit 5, but any CMSIS-DAP probe should work).

Installation

1. Clone this repo:

   git clone [https://github.com/kumar-mohan/pydap-link.git](https://github.com/kumar-mohan/pydap-link.git)
   cd pydap-link

2. Set up a virtual environment (highly recommended so you don't break your system Python):

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install the dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

📖 Usage

Connect your board and run the tool:

python pydap_link.py