How to automate the entrance in bootloader mode on nRF52840 USB dongle?

[Cedric ABGRALL]

Dear DEVZONE,

We are working on Nordic nRF58480 USB dongle for Thread activities.

We are using one testbench on which we need to automate with Python scripts reprogramming of the USB dongle with a new firmware.

To this end, we need to reflash the USB dongle; but nRF52480 requires a pression on a small button to enter into bootloader mode, and this is incompatible with automation.

We may find an HW fix to solve this limitation but we are rather wondering whether you have another solution you could propose?

 

We found a DFU trigger library (USB) thread but we did not succeed in exploiting it.

nRF5 SDK v17.0.2: DFU Trigger Library (USB)

 

Similarly, we found this document specifying the Device Firmware Upgrade over USB.

DFU_1.1.doc

 

Could you please support or advise us?

Warm regards

Cedric

[DanielNG]

You can switch to MCUboot as the bootloader. Please refer to this documentation

Instead of using a button MCUboot can be configured to wait for a limited time at startup to check if DFU is invoked through an MCUmgr command.



Please refer to MCUboot serial recovery

[Cedric ABGRALL]

Dear Daniel
Please let me double check with my colleagues if your proposal solves their issue. I will come back to you then.

Warm regards

Cédric

[Robin D.]

Hello DanielNG ,

I'm working with Cedric on Thread activities.

Just to make sure we have the same understanding of the issue we are encountering, here is our main constraints : we want to be able to upgrade the dongle's firmware without any physical access to the dongle and without making any modification to the firmware we are flashing on the dongle (we use the firmware provided with the Thread Test Harness so we can't modify it).

For now, all the potential solutions I found (including the one you proposed) require either to plug an additionnal debug probe on the dongle or to edit the firmware to flash on the dongle (let me know if I'm wrong and your solution does not require any of these two actions).

Kind regards,

Robin