2023-12-25

The firmware download provided on the Buchla LEM218v3 product page instructs how to update the firmware on Windows or MacOS, but since the process uses standard open source tools the firmware can be updated from a Linux machine as well.

steps

1. Download and install tools

Download the latest Linux release of SendMIDI from https://github.com/gbevin/SendMIDI/releases. Extract the binary from the archive and place on your PATH. At this time, the latest release with pre-built Linux binaries is 1.1.0, which works fine for this task.

Download the latest Linux release of dfu-programmer from https://github.com/dfu-programmer/dfu-programmer/releases. Extract the binary from the archive and place on your PATH.

2. Place LEM218 in DFU mode

Run the following commands to place the LEM in DFU/Device Firmware Upgrade mode:

# put LEM in dfu mode
sendmidi dec
sendmidi dev 218e syx 0 2 55 2 1 1

You can ensure the LEM is in firmware mode by running dfu-util -l to list devices. The LEM should be in this list before moving onto next step.

3. Flash new firmware

Download and extract the 218ev3-Firmware-Flashing.zip file from https://buchla.com/lem218/. The firmware file to flash is 218eV3_v362_DFU.hex, found in either the mac/ or windows/ folders of this extracted file. Both firmware hex files are the same.

Run the following commands to flash the new firmware. Update FIRMWARE_FILE to point to where the hex file is downloaded on your system.

FIRMWARE_FILE="$HOME/Downloads/218ev3-Firmware-Flashing/mac/218eV3_v362_DFU.hex"

# erase current firmware
dfu-programmer at32uc3b1256 erase

# program new firmware
dfu-programmer at32uc3b1256 flash --suppress-bootloader-mem "$FIRMWARE_FILE"

# restart LEM
dfu-programmer at32uc3b1256 start

Your LEM218 is now running the latest firmware. Enjoy!