SAM-BA® ISP - Host Command Line Interface

Introduction

Control of the SAM-BA® host application program is from the command line. If you are using Windows®, open a command prompt. If you are using Linux®, open a terminal window.

As a best practice, be sure to add the SAM-BA directory to the PATH of your environment variables so that you can execute SAM-BA commands from your project directories.

SAM-BA_Block_Diagram.png

Command line options are subject to change between versions of the SAM-BA host application program.

Help

The -h, --help option will print out the available commands specific to the version of the SAM-BA host application program.

$ sam-ba –-help

SAM-BA Command Line Tool v3.3.1
Copyright 2018 Microchip Technology

Usage: sam-ba [options]

Options:
  -v, --version                          Displays version information.
  -h, --help                             Displays this help.
  -t, --tracelevel <trace_level>         Set trace level to <trace_level>.
  -x, --execute <script.qml>             Execute script <script.qml>.
  -p, --port <port[:options:...]>        Communicate with device using <port>.
  -d, --device <device[:options:...]>    Connected device is <device>.
  -b, --board <board[:options:...]>      Connected board is <board>.
  -m, --monitor <command[:options:...]>  Run monitor command <command>.
  -a, --applet <applet[:options:...]>    Load and initialize applet <applet>.
  -c, --command <command[:args:...]>     Run command <command>.
  -w, --working-directory <DIR>          Set working directory to <DIR>.

The SAM-BA host application program communicates with the target device which has the SAM-BA monitor program embedded in its ROM boot code. Setup of the host to monitor serial communications is performed with the -p, --port option. For additional information, see "SAM-BA Host to Monitor Serial Communications".

The SAM-BA host application program is configured to communicate with specific targets using the -d, --device and -b, --board options. For additional information, see "Supported Devices and Evaluation Kits".

SAM-BA monitor commands can be executed from the SAM-BA host application program using the -m, --monitor option. For additional information, see "SAM-BA Monitor Commands".

The SAM-BA host application program can load and execute binary Applet programs in the target device RAM to provide additional features and capabilities using the -a, --applet option. For more information, see "SAM-BA Applets".

SAM-BA Applet programs can provide status and logging information through the Target Console. The verbosity can be set with the -t, --tracelevel options. For more information, see "Target Console Serial Communications".

The SAM-BA host can execute Qt Modeling Language (QML) scripts to combine many low-level commands to simplify development and debugging using the -x, --execute and -c, --command options. For more information, see "SAM-BA Host QML Scripts".

Additional help information can be found for each of the individual options adding the help argument. For example:

$ sam-ba —port help
Known ports: serial, j-link, secure