Olimex founder Tsvetan Usunov has announced a new feature for the company’s speedy RT1010Py MicroPython development board: a port of the TinyUF2 bootloader for drag-and-drop firmware flashing.
“Robert Hammelrath did amazing job by adding [a] usbtinyuf2 bootloader to it, so now you can replace the MicroPython firmware by simple drag and drop like you do on [Raspberry Pi] Pico,” Usunov explains of the board’s new feature. “We will ship all RT1010Py from now on with usbtinyuf2 bootloader.”
Olimex’s Tsvetan Usunov has announced a TinyUF2 port for the RT1010Py MicroPython board, for easy drag-and-drop firmware installation. (📷: Olimex/MicroPython)
The company launched the RT1010Py back in November 2023, as what Usunov called its “fastest board running MicroPython” — thanks to the NXP Semiconductors MIMXRT1011DAE5A “crossover” microcontroller at its heart. The chip’s 500MHz Arm Cortex-M7 core provides, Usunov says, around four times the performance of the Raspberry Pi RP2040 on an earlier Olimex MicroPython board design, while an optional “devkit” carrier board added USB Type-C power, two UEXT connectors, and two mains-voltage relays to the breadboard-friendly development board’s capabilities.
The new bootloader does nothing to boost the performance still further, but does make it so it’s easier to load new firmware onto the board. Just double-click the on-board RESET button and the microcontroller will load UF2 mode — appearing to the host operating system to be a surprisingly low-capacity USB Mass Storage Device. Drag and drop any compatible UF2-format firmware to this drive, and it will suddenly disappear as the board flashes the firmware and loads it on reboot.
Instructions on flashing and using the new bootloader are available on the MicroPython website, while boards with the bootloader pre-loaded are available from the Olimex store priced at €15 (around $16.50) each; the board design files are available on GitHub under the permissive Apache 2.0 license.
