Dmitry Grinberg’s father started to teach his son programming at around age six, and Dmitry has been a programmer ever since. Working at Palm, VMWare, Kno, Lab126 and Google, Dmitry has a wide range of projects and experiences under his belt. After developing a long list of projects Grinberg is back with CortexProg, a tool for programming and debugging Cortex-M microcontroller projects. CortexProg has been in development since 2014, when Grinberg became frustrated with the high entry cost of JLINK or ULINK systems.
CortexProg is primarily a debugging tool for microcontrollers but can also reverse engineer projects. Grinberg has also used it to program new designs, program production line boards, and general devboard hacking. One of the board’s best feature is ZeroWireTrace, allowing the unit to output text from the target project without needing a physical connection, and only requiring three lines of code to implement. CortexProg can debug and modify several cores on the same chip, and all current and upcoming cortex chips will work with this sytem.
One of the hopes for this new debug tool is that it’s inexpensive enough that a maker with many projects under development can leave one CortexProg attached to each project instead of bouncing them around. There’s a strong commitment to open-source ideals and the project’s User Manual, Developer Manual, and beta version firmware are already available for potential users. This Kickstarter version is the fourth iteration of the CortexProg, and the company is happy to hear suggestions for feature additions and improvements for upcoming releases. I’ve had some frustration with boards that seem connected properly and coded properly but couldn’t quite give the output we desired, so I definitely understand the appeal of a debugging device that’s cheap enough to be left with the project while you take a mental break for a few days. The Kickstarter campaign has already blown well past its modest funding goal, and will end on August 25 with units currently scheduled to ship in November.