Write to flash from computer

Projects Programming
1

Hi all!

I would like to be able to connect the Arduino (UNO) to my computer (Linux) and write about 100 bytes to the EEPROM on the flash onboard the Arduino. I know I can achieve this with a dedicated sketch via the serial ports, but I'd like to avoid rewriting sketches (seems difficult to do cross platform).

Background: An Arduino connected to LED strips and an IR receiver. The user presses a button on a remote and the Arduino loads the corresponding predefined settings from memory. The Arduino lights the LEDs accordingly. A remote has a limited number of buttons to press on, and the user might use ten of them. Ten buttons for ten distinct LED settings. When the user will want to change these predefined settings to some new ones, they'll need to rewrite the settings stored onboard the Arduino. The user could communicate those new settings via the serial port and a new sketch, or... It might be possible to do that directly from the computer...? Like, mount it first, and write to it then? Alternatively, it might be a lot easier than I thought to compile and upload sketches switching between them every time the user needs to. I'd basically have 2 sketches, one for loading the settings and lighting the LEDs, and one for writing new setting to file. Yet another option would be to write a complicated sketch that does all of these things...

I should add that all of this needs to be programmable, I know we can switch sketches etc via the excellent Arduino IDE, but I'm programming the interface from another program (Julia) and need this to happen in the background (and cross platform if possible).

Thanks!!!

2

Seems you are confusing flash and EEPROM

Here is something to read

if you were to use an ESP based arduino, you could use SPIFFS to upload data in the SPIFFS managers area of the flash memory

3

In sort, no it's not possible directly.

You can indeed write a sketch for it. There is nothing "cross platform" about it, it's just parsing Serial. Heck, it can even be part of the normal sketch, no problem!

But I think making it learn (aka, point the remote at it) is way easier for the user then to have to figure out some sort of code. So I would just add a button to the module. And for example, long press to enter learn mode, in learn mode, short press to cycle the led-modes. And if it's in a learn-mode, sending a IR-command form a remote will make it learn that command for the current selected led-mode. Turn off (or blink or whatever) to indicate it has learned the new code.