Device firmware update (DFU) over NFC

[Marelcom]

Hi

for DFU is bluetooth used by default. Your DFU app suports only using bluetooth to do a DFU.

Do you have any tools to do a DFU over NFC? Or do I have to write a tool by myself?

Thanks and best regards
Markus

[Hung Bui]

Hi Markus, 
Could you give more information about your application ? 
Usually NFC is not the best option to transfer DFU image file due to the slower throughput. 

We don't have any example or tool that show casing transferring image with NFC. But I don't see any reason it can't be done. 

[Marelcom]

Hi
yes shure:
The device is like a label. It has an e-paper and is driven by a button cell battery. User will send the display data over NFC to the device, while using a smartphone.

The main goal is that the DFU uses as less power as possible. As far as I can tell, NFC is more power efficient than Bluetooth, correct?

[Hung Bui]

Hi Markus, 
I don't think doing DFU via NFC is more power efficiency than BLE. The biggest challenge is that the NFC communication is slow, the buffer is small and you will have to wake up the CPU to receive and response on each packet. I think if you calculate the energy for the same process, NFC DFU may draw more current than BLE. With BLE the radio receive larger the data packet without waking up the CPU. The CPU then only wake up when the buffer is ready to write to flash. 

You may want to do some test to verify that. So far I haven't seen any of our customers doing DFU over NFC.