Unable to flash Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 with bossac runner in Zephyr (Flash erase failed)

RE: Unable to flash Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 with bossac runner in Zephyr (Flash erase failed)

Vidar Berg — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 05:15:50 GMT

It sounds like it’s just a matter of finding the bossac arguments used by the Arduino IDE then. Have you tried adding the -a argument mentioned in this blog post: https://shanesnover.com/2023/12/18/zephyr-flash-nano-33-ble.html ?

Please note that our SDK documentation includes a copy of the official Zephyr Project documentation, which means it is not limited to Nordic products.

[quote user="ltrush"]If possible, I would love to make my project work this way, but if that fails I do have a nrf52480 dongle.[/quote]

Both the dongle and this board support this BLE role, but the nRF52840 dongle is generally not recommended for development. It was not designed for that purpose (You need to connect an external J-link probe and solder a connector to the SWD lines to get debug access.). Our development kits (e.g. nRF52840 DK) comes with an on-board Jlink debugger and are better suited for this.

RE: Unable to flash Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 with bossac runner in Zephyr (Flash erase failed)

ltrush — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 20:23:40 GMT

I get the same results when I try to run bossac directly (without west) through CLI.

PS C:\ncs\v3.1.0\zephyr\samples\basic\blinky> C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\tools\bossac\1.9.1-arduino2\bossac.exe -p COM4 -R -w -v -b C:\ncs\v3.1.0\zephyr\samples\basic\blinky\build\blinky\zephyr\zephyr.bin
Write 21856 bytes to flash (6 pages)
[ ] 0% (0/6 pages)
Flash erase failed

The Arduino IDE (which I believe uses BOSSAC to flash devices) Is perfectly capable of flashing my Arduino Nano 33 BLE. But it seems I'm unable to through west. I am following the steps laid out in this Nordic doc: docs.nordicsemi.com/.../index.html

RE: Unable to flash Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 with bossac runner in Zephyr (Flash erase failed)

ltrush — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 20:17:43 GMT

I am just following the steps outlined by this official Nordic doc: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/zephyr/boards/arduino/nano_33_ble/doc/index.html

If possible, I would love to make my project work this way, but if that fails I do have a nrf52480 dongle. My goal is to have two Arduino Nano 33 BLEs simultaneously read data over BLE from a "central device". I just don't know if the dongle is capable of being that device.

RE: Unable to flash Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 with bossac runner in Zephyr (Flash erase failed)

Vidar Berg — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 10:50:16 GMT

Hi Luke,

I don’t have experience with programming through the Arduino bootloader, so it’s a bit hard for me to say what might be causing the flash erase failure. Are you able to flash the firmware by running bossac.exe directly from the command line or through another programming app or does that also fail?

Note: you can run 'west -vvvv flash' to get a verbose output from the west runner. It will show all the arguments that is passed to the bossac executable.

Best regards,

Vidar

RE: Unable to flash Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 with bossac runner in Zephyr (Flash erase failed)

Turbo J — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 06:21:38 GMT

That 3rd party software is not supported here.

If you wanted to do serious development, get a nordic DK board and use the included JLink debugger over the SWD connection. That way would be supported here.

Pretty sure you can't use zephyr samples unmodified with a bootloader present.