How to DFU nRF52833 OTA over Non Nordic standard Bluetooth module

[Emin]

Hello,

We have nRF52833 on the custom board, now we want to do DFU over Bluetooth. During my initial research reults with following questions:

If you use

1. "nRF Connect for Desktop Bluetooth Low Energy" 

Q: Why selected device allows ONLY Nordic dongles or DK. Why not standard PC or Laptop BLE Adapter not visible as "SELECT Device"? Any alternative?

2. nrf5SDK-Tool

I found that there is also a possible way to to DFU over BLE with  nrfutil nrf5sdk-tools   command. BUT Following written as description  nrfutil nrf5sdk-tools dfu ble --help command says similar:

Perform a Device Firmware Update on a device with a bootloader that supports
BLE DFU. This requires a second nRF device, connected to this computer, with
connectivity firmware loaded. The connectivity device will perform the DFU
procedure onto the target device.

Q: The same issue, the BT device (as loaded or sender) must be nRF device. 

So, finally: I couldn't find a sample or documentation about it. Could you please give more information or send docs link or videos "how to DFU OTA over non Nordic BLE

One more info: we whant to do DFU from Windows Application, that's why, C++ or C# library fits ideally if available.

Thanks

[Menon]

Hello,

I wanted to let you know that I have been assigned to this case and have started looking into it now. I was away the last few days, which is causing the delay. Sorry for the long response time.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

[Menon]

Hello,

Could you tell me which SDK and version you are using here? BLE OTA DFU service is different when it comes to the nRF Connect SDK and our old nRF5 SDK.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

[Emin]

Thank you for reply.

- As tool I am using latest nrfutil 7.7.1 and nrfutil-nrf5sdk-tools 1.0.1 (c86ddc2 2022-11-29)

- As SDK, which is installed on my VSCode is nRF Connect SDK 2.6.0

- The current Firmware in my destination nRF52833 based board uses nRF Connect SDK 2.5.X

Should I install another nrfutil tool?

[Menon]

Hello,

When it comes to the nRF Connect SDK, the BLE OTA DFU is based on the SMP service. As far as I remember, the nRF Connect desktop app (a Bluetooth low-energy app) does not support DFU processes with the nRF Connect SDK. In short, the process explained here is not possible. For testing this, try connecting your DFU target device using the nRF Connect mobile application and the nRF Connect desktop Bluetooth app. You can see that the DFU button is present inside the mobile application, while it is missing inside the desktop app. The old SDK was based on Secure Bootloader, which had support for this. I think you are following an old guide based on an old SDK.

See this blog post on nRF util, which explains generating DFU packages.

 

One more info: we whant to do DFU from Windows Application, that's why, C++ or C# library fits ideally if available.

You might need to consider developing your own custom application for doing this.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

[Menon]

Hello,

I am not sure if this can be done from a windows system but this is possible from a Linux system using the mcumgr tool. See this page.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith