{"id":874,"date":"2012-04-23T10:16:29","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T10:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/?p=874"},"modified":"2012-04-26T16:23:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T16:23:32","slug":"new-to-the-fcd-heres-a-top-tip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/?p=874","title":{"rendered":"New to the FCD? Here&#8217;s a top tip!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Folks<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s cut to the chase &#8211; update your firmware! The latest is 18j.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve noted that a lot of people just starting out with the FCD start by using some of the great newer software products out there, like SDR Radio for example, that weren&#8217;t about or set up to directly work with the FCD when we first designed it.<\/p>\n<p>Almost all of this software is dependent on later versions of firmware that you&#8217;ll need to install first before you can use the FCD with them.<\/p>\n<p>To update your firmware, you need to follow these steps from Windows&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>o Download the <em><strong>original<\/strong><\/em> FCD controller program FCHID003 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/MyImages\/FCHid003.zip\">https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/MyImages\/FCHid003.zip<\/a>), FCHIDBL bootloader program (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/MyImages\/FCHIDBL001.zip\">https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/MyImages\/FCHIDBL001.zip<\/a>), and the firmware image itself (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/MyImages\/export18j.pro.bin\">https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/MyImages\/export18j.pro.bin<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>o *Important*! Exit any applications that may try to access the FCD. These will\u00a0break the update process as they\u00a0coexist on\u00a0the same USB communication channel, so they must be closed down first.<\/p>\n<p>o Plug in the FCD and let the drivers install if necessary. If it&#8217;s the first time you&#8217;ve inserted the FCD, it might take up to a minute or so to install.<\/p>\n<p>o Run the FCHID003 FCD controller program (FCHID.exe), and press &#8220;Reset to bootloader&#8221;. This puts the FCD into a special &#8220;bootloader mode&#8221; to allow you to upload new code. Ignore any errors you see in FCHID &#8211; this is because FCHID is trying to communicate with the FCD but, because it&#8217;s now\u00a0in bootloader mode,\u00a0FCHID won&#8217;t\u00a0be able to interpret what it&#8217;s getting\u00a0back from its USB commands.<\/p>\n<p>o Exit FCHID.<\/p>\n<p>o Run the FCHIDBL.exe program you just downloaded, press &#8220;Open file&#8221;, and select the &#8220;export18j.pro.bin&#8221; file you&#8217;ve also just downloded.<\/p>\n<p>o From FCHIDBL, press &#8220;Write firmware&#8221;, and then wait a few seconds for the process to complete.<\/p>\n<p>o Exit FCHIDBL.<\/p>\n<p>o Remove the FCD and then reinsert 10 seconds or so later. This automatically takes the FCD out of bootloader mode and back to its normal SDR operating mode.<\/p>\n<p>o You will see an error like this if FCHIDBL is still running when you reinsert the FCD:<\/p>\n<p><em>HIDOpen of Vid_04d8&amp;Pid_FB56 returns 1<\/em><br \/>\n<em>USB VID\/PID found.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>HIDQuery returns 1<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Query message: FCDAPP 18.10 Brd 1.1 No blk<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Error: not in recoginised FCD mode<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is actually correct despite it suggesting it&#8217;s an error! It is just the FCHIDBL program not understanding that the FCD is in normal SDR mode: the FCHIDBL program only understands the FCD when it&#8217;s in bootloader mode.<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks, Howard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Folks Let&#8217;s cut to the chase &#8211; update your firmware! The latest is 18j. I&#8217;ve noted that a lot of people just starting out with the FCD start by using some of the great newer software products out there, like &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/?p=874\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":878,"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funcubedongle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}