Build Firmware

Note

I highly recommend using the precompiled firmware by following the “Firmware Update” guides. This page is only for advanced users who want to compile the firmware themselves, for example, to modify it.

1. Download and install the Arduino IDE

2. Download the USB Nova firmware from GitHub. (If you downloaded ZIP, extract the entire folder and rename it from USBNova-main to USBNova)

3. Open USBNova-main/usbnova.ino with the Arduino IDE

4. Go to Tools > Manage Libraries and install the following libraries:

   • SimpleCLI
   • Adafruit Neopixel
   • Adafruit SPIFlash
   • ArduinoJson

5. Edit config.h to match your hardware

6. Under Tools > Board select your board. For RP2040 boards, like the Raspberry Pi Pico, you must first install Arduino-Pico. For SAMD boards, you must first install the Adafruit SAMD Boards.

7. Under Tools > USB Stack select TinyUSB

8. Under Tools > Port select your board’s port. If you don’t see a port, make sure your board is connected to your computer

9. Click Compile or Upload

To add USB Nova to the boards’ list, you have to edit the boards.txt file of the Adafruit SAMD Boards. You can find it under this or a similar path C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\adafruit\hardware\samd\1.8.11\boards.txt. You need to add these lines to the file.

The USB Nova mkII is compiled as generic rp2040 with 16MB flash.

I made a simple compile script using Arduino-CLI to help me compile the firmware for all boards. You can find it here.