Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

Antondk — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 16:33:30 GMT

It is possible to have an ESB-only application, without any ble and put the device into FOTA-mode by pulling down pin18 on boot. This enables ble FOTA from Softdevice, so it obviously requires Softdevice to be on the device. It is only pin18 that trigger the FOTA-mode, no other pin triggers it.

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

Antondk — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 16:30:22 GMT

Please se my update for my findings.

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

Vidar Berg — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 09:00:38 GMT

Hi, the bootloader examples we have in our SDK is relies on the softdevice being present. Reason for that is that it uses the sd flash API, MBR, BLE for OTA, and interrupt forwarding. Unfortunately, we don't have an example bootloader example using ESB nor a bootloader that doesn't rely on SD API .

That being said, the bootloader itself is designed to be transport agnostic. This means that it should be possible to write your own transport layer for the ESB and use the same bootloader. If you have memory to spare, it would probably be easiest to have the softdevice loaded in flash. This way you don't have to do any changes besides creating your own transport layer. Otherwise you need to modify the bootloader so it has not dependencies towards the SD.

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

Antondk — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 10:43:50 GMT

Allright, I'll wait and see if someone from Nordic answers me. Thanks for your input!

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

JohnBrown — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 15:02:36 GMT

It is independent from the application, but it uses the BLE Soft Device. As far as the ESB stuff goes, I am ignorant, and you may have to wait for someone from Nordic to answer you.

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

Antondk — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 14:41:59 GMT

Okay, I might have misunderstood something then. As I understand it the OTA Bootloader is independent from the application, so if I can trigger the bootloader by pulling down a pin on boot, it doesn't matter whether or not my application has BLE. I don't need to enter the bootloader at any arbitrary time while running, only when I pull down a pin manually (like a switch)

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

JohnBrown — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 14:08:37 GMT

No. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

I do not work for Nordic, but as far as I know their OTA DFU only works with BLE. I would imagine that Seed Studio use a version of the Nordic DFU code.

I was merely addressing the pin 18 part of the question. Sorry if I muddied the waters.

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

Antondk — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 13:40:27 GMT

Okay, so if I understand this correctly I can have a ESB application running, without any BLE, and if I need to update the application i can just pull down pin18 and update the application via OTA?

RE: Using FOTA in a non-BLE application

JohnBrown — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 13:33:23 GMT

Pulling down pin 18(or any other pin), is not a hardware thing on the nRF chip, all it means is that the bootloader program, which has the "first look-in" at reset, will check for that pin being pulled low, and go into bootloader mode if found. If not, then it will, I believe, make some other checks as to whether a valid app is present in flash, and determine whether to bootload or jump to the app.