Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

RE: Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

Raoul — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 11:30:31 GMT

Hi, no problem!

Sounds good.

Raoul

RE: Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

Jithin A — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 05:22:35 GMT

Thank you for the suggestion, Raoul.

We will focus on optimizing overall power consumption and maybe you are right as we don't do OTA every time or more often so optimizing overall power consumption should do better.

RE: Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

Raoul — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 15:53:35 GMT

Hi Jithin,

I was told that differential (or "delta") FOTA updates are not supported and that there are no plans to support it either.

So what you are trying to do is not possible, unfortunately. I'm not sure if you have measured the effect of firmware updates on your battery duration but I would suspect that the rest of your power consumption will matter much more than the size of your firmware update. I assume you won't be sending firmware updates at a high frequency.

I would recommend trying to optimize your footprint and overall power consumption.

Best regards,

Raoul

RE: Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

Jithin A — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 07:34:18 GMT

Thank you for the response.
Please check it with the internal team once. This could help us a lot for our project.

[quote userid="117489" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/103658/implementing-differential-ota-in-nrf5340-using-nrf-connect-sdk-v2-2-0/445681"]I think it's hard to do updates on a per module basis, as any changes to your code are almost certain to shift the other (untouched) code around in the image.[/quote]

--> I know it is hard to do so and yes it modifies the memory mapping of the other code around.

What we are planning is to have 2 different applications just like you have non-secure and secure applications.

So that we build the project in 2 different applications, and we need to link/map with each other as in _ns applications, you are using PSA functions to post any message for the other application.
Can we have a similar kind of builds and merge it as a single FW in their respective partitions and perform OTA for the desired partition?

Please help me with this.

I appreciate your help.

RE: Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

Raoul — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 14:51:15 GMT

Hi Jithin,

As far as I know, there is no support for differential firmware updates. I'll double check internally, and if I hear otherwise, I'll get back to you with details.

I think it's hard to do updates on a per module basis, as any changes to your code are almost certain to shift the other (untouched) code around in the image.

As mentioned in Differential OTA update in nRF_Connect_SDK it's not uncommon to use external flash memory. But that only addresses your concern regarding space, not battery consumption.

Besides that, I hope these two resources are useful as well:

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/test_and_optimize/optimizing/memory.html
https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/zephyr/develop/optimizations/index.html

Best regards,
Raoul

RE: Implementing differential OTA in nRF5340 using NRF Connect SDK v2.2.0

Jithin A — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:32:33 GMT

Hi,

Please help me with this as this is more like a critical issue for us because it is more battery consuming and taking so much memory.

Please, can anyone guide me through this?

Thank you.