connections.ev3: Improve firmware update.

[laurensvalk]

• Allow faster flashing of smaller firmwares by erasing only as much as needed.
• Work around USB3.0 issues with the EV3 bootloader. Thanks @JakubVanek for notes in this issue!

Since all of the changes could be done without any low level hacking of the HID API, this is very promising for when we make a web-based version in the future.

Changes have not been tested on a USB2.0 system yet, but there should be no changes.

Tested on a copy of the official firmware (16MiB).

And on a 1.5MiB Pybricks firmware, which now takes about 6 seconds to erase and 6 seconds to install, instead of up to two minutes or more.

[BertLindeman]

Rats, I have a re-freshed clone on linux and wanted to test USB-2 flash.

It works, but I am not sure if i use the updated version.
Might there be a way to be sure I run the new flash.py?

I ran in the activated .venv in the git clone on an USB-2 plug:

pipx run pybricksdev flash /home/bert/Downloads/pybricks-firmware/nxt-firmware-build-3607-git9e5ef68d.zip
⚠️  pybricksdev is already on your PATH and installed at /home/bert/py/pybricks/git_clone/pybricksdev/.venv/bin/pybricksdev. Downloading and running anyway.
Creating firmware...
Looking for the NXT in SAM-BA mode...
Brick found!
Flashing firmware...
Flashing complete, jumping to 0x100000...
Firmware started.

In ../pybricksdev/cli/flash.py I do see the update.

        ERASE_TICKS = 60

So looks good, but . . .

Bert

[dlech]

LGTM

[laurensvalk]

@BertLindeman, this is an update for EV3. There were no changes for NXT.

[BertLindeman]

@BertLindeman, this is an update for EV3. There were no changes for NXT.

Hard to read ;-) Thanks