Electronic Cats' DAP Cat Programmer Is a $4 Open-Hardware CMSIS-DAP Debug Tool for Arm Cortex Cores

Confirmed compatible with the Arduino IDE and OpenOCD, the DAP Cat aims to make Arm Cortex program and debug as simple as possible.

Gareth Halfacree
3 years ago β€’ Productivity

Electronic Cats is back with a new board design, but this time it has turned its attention to the CMSIS-DAP (DAPlink) protocol to produce a programming and debugging tool: the DAP Cat Programmer.

"[The] DAP Cat Programmer is a low-cost, debug probe based on the CMSIS-DAP (also known as DAPLink) protocol standard and USB-Serial convert and it can realize USB convert to serial interface," the company explains of its latest board design. "It can be used to program and debug the application software running on Arm Cortex microcontrollers. The probe comes with indicator LEDs, a button to reset the target or trigger the firmware update, reversible USB-C connector and easy-to-use 10-pin 2.54mm header."

Built around the WCH CH552G microcontroller, the DAP Cat has 1kB of RAM, 256 bytes of instruction RAM, 16kB flash, and USB drivers loaded into ROM with flash update functionality available via USB. Shipped with the Arm Mbed DAPLink firmware, the board offers a CMSIS-DAP-compliant debug channel and a USB serial interface over the same Type-C connector. The headers include access to a 3.3V DC-DC regulator with 1A output current.

The board has been tested as compatible with both the Arduino IDE and OpenOCD, while Electronic Cats says it may also be compatible with PyOCD, Dap.js, Keil, IAR, and edbg β€” but warns compatibility has not yet been tested with these packages.

The board is now available to buy on Electronic Cats' Tindie store at just $4; the design files and source code have been published to GitHub under the CERN Open Hardware License v1.2 and the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 for the hardware and software respectively.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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