EM2420/AVR

Concerning the radio transmission power value (radioTxPower member of EmberNetworkParameters struct), many of Ember's sample applications use a default value if -1 (which is -1 dBm).  This value comes from a desire to keep the code compatible across Ember platforms, since the EM2420 legacy solution supported only a maximum output power setting of -1 dBm.  The EM2xx chips, however, are capable of being set as high as 3 (for a nominal effective radiated power [ERP] of about +3 dBm, give or take about 1.5 dBm variance across chips), so you can feel free to adjust this as needed.

Etrim is an Ember utility used to post-process the binaries for AVR MCUs, including the ATmega128L (used with the EM2420) and the ATmega32L (used with the EM260). It does two things related to the Ember bootloaders for AVR: For the V1 standalone bootloader (BIN files), it trims off leading and trailing zeros that would interfere with the bootloader (hence, its name). It also adds some header info and some tags to create EBL files for use with the V2 Standalone bootloader.

I want to integrate the Ember Standalone Bootloader into my application so that I no longer require InSight Desktop or em2xx_load.exe to upload firmware to my devices. Is there an example somewhere of how to do this?

For examples of using the standalone bootloader in your application, please refer to the Standalone Bootloader Demo application, which can be found in /app/standalone-bootloader-demo in EmberZNet installations ofr EM250 and AVR+EM2420. (Also note that all sample application are described in detail in /app/sampleApps.htm.)