Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

Hieu — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 11:48:42 GMT

It's good to hear that you have got what you needed.

[quote user="isactornberg"]Also good point about reserving some space for the two different settings to be able to preserve state between switching between the different kind of applications.[/quote]

Credits to my kind colleague, Sigurd Hellesvik , for helping me come to that solution. I was so focused on having both applications sharing one Zephyr Settings partition and considering what might happen that I was oblivious to the possibility that it can work as two independent applications sharing one hardware.

[quote user="isactornberg"]I will probably start with the simplest possible solution, basically using the concrete example given by nLorami (Thanks!), which as I understand will override the settings between DFUs and not persist any states between switching.[/quote]

Sounds like a good plan. Please don't hesitate return if you have any other questions on the topic or open a new DevZone case if it is a new question.

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

isactornberg — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 07:15:40 GMT

Awesome, really appreciate the help Hieu!

I think I will try to finish the porting to the zephyr based bluetooth mesh application before testing out running the two stacks in the same applications. But in the long term running them in the same application would definitely be something I would like to explore, not sure what kind of priority it will have since my schedule is quite packed as well currently. Will definitely get back to you if I start testing things out.

Regarding switching between the two applications I totally missed that they both will can run with the same MCUboot bootloader, thanks for pointing it out. :)
Also good point about reserving some space for the two different settings to be able to preserve state between switching between the different kind of applications.

I will probably start with the simplest possible solution, basically using the concrete example given by Lorenzo Amicucci (Thanks!), which as I understand will override the settings between DFUs and not persist any states between switching.

(Edit) Btw I'm totally fine with running the DFU over BLE as of now.

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

Hieu — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 07:57:48 GMT

Lorenzo Amicucci Thank you for pointing out the Thingy53 solution. Yes, it supports DFU via bootloader's serial recovery feature, or BLE DFU, and can easily swap between applications of any protocols.

The caveat with the default Thingy53 setup as is after being DFU'd away, an application, says Mesh, won't be able to retain its persistent data like its provisioning data. That is the reason behind my mentioned of reserving partitions.

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

Lorenzo Amicucci — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 07:32:51 GMT

one comment from me:
if you want to see how we did it on the Thingy:53, here the material. In this case, we can change from Matter weather station to other Bluetooth Mesh samples over BLE.

Thingy:53:
- It support out of the box BT Mesh and Matter samples
- Connect the Thingy over BLE to the smartphone (nRF Programmer for thingy 53), and DFU it with the application you wish

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

Hieu — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 15:20:03 GMT

Hi isactomberc,

I had liked to actually combine a Matter and Bluetooth Mesh together to see if the total size still fit a nRF52840. However, there are some sudden changes to my schedule, and it looks like I cannot get to that soon.

Would you like to give it a try? 8MB of external flash is plenty to put the downloaded firmware on. However, both the Matter and Bluetooth Mesh stack are large. I am not sure it can fit on the nRF52840.

Regarding switching between the Matter and Bluetooth Mesh via DFU, if you only want one of them active at a time, then that should be possible. I understand that you are new to the nRF Connect SDK, but a few things you will want to note are:

Use external flash for DFU secondary slot if possible, that enable the more space on internal flash for the active firmware.
Both Mesh and Matter uses Zephyr Settings, so on the (preferably internal) flash memory, you need to reserve two partitions, one for the Mesh application, and one for the Matter application.
- This is unless you want the two applications to somehow share some other Zephyr Settings. This can get complicated, and I am not sure if it is possible at the moment.
The DFU feature provides an option to "test" the new firmware, where if it satisfies certain condition, it can then be "confirmed."
For common applications staying on one protocol, then a remote device can perform some wireless communication test, and then trigger the confirm remotely.
As you are switching protocol, this remote confirmation can get complicated.

For more information about the MCUboot bootloader, you can refer to:

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/mcuboot/design.html

Finally, regarding DFU over Bluetooth Mesh, the support is currently experimental. Furthermore, the DFU feature is defined in Mesh Protocol specification v1.1, which as of now is in draft and not published. I need to check with our Mesh expert to see if the inclusion of this feature would prevent a product for qualifying for Mesh 1.0. However, this too is affected by the emergencies in my schedule.

However, we also provide DFU over BLE in coexistence with Bluetooth Mesh. That is for sure not going to affect Bluetooth qualification.

I will get back to you on the detail of DFU over Bluetooth Mesh. Please let me know if you can give combining Matter and Mesh a try.

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

isactornberg — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 18:18:12 GMT

Hi Hieu,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Good question. We are mainly looking to support switching between the Matter and Bluetooth Mesh via DFU, not running them as a coexisting application, however that would be really cool if that would be possible.

RE: Switching between bluetooth mesh stack and Matter stack using DFU

Hieu — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 11:10:06 GMT

Hi isactornberg,

I would like a clarification. Is your eventual goal having a device that can swap between a Matter and a Bluetooth Mesh application via DFU? Or is your goal having a Matter + Bluetooth Mesh coexisting application?

Hieu