Firmware Management on Smartphone Sensing Extender

Abstract

In this paper, I present my research on a firmware management system for a FoneAstra device that was developed to extend the sensing capability of a smartphone. The work is focused on the development of an Android applications ecosystem that replaces a conventional software tool for updating AVR microcontrollers’ firmware. The ecosystem contains FROG (Foneastra pROGrammer), FROGHexProvider, and the FoneAstra bootloader. In addition, I implemented a mini operating system to allow FoneAstra users to run multiple sensor functions without having to flash in new firmware every time they switch from one function to another. This work will be used as a starting point for future work to configure the FROG ecosystem to support placing multiple-sensor firmware in specific memory locations on a single FoneAstra’s flash memory.