Enabled DFU and OTA in nRF54L15

[Haresh05]

Hi,

I have developed a custom application on nRF54L15 and now I want to add OTA over BLE support in it.

For that, I am following Exercise 5 – FOTA over Bluetooth Low Energy.

I tried with the BLE_LBS sample as suggested and I am able to update the firmware but not always. On few occasions the device disconnects and then OTA fails every time and need to flash the device again. Below are the logs from the sample.

*** Booting My Application v2.9.0-5ab89f397924 ***
*** Using nRF Connect SDK v3.1.0-6c6e5b32496e ***
*** Using Zephyr OS v4.1.99-1612683d4010 ***
Starting Bluetooth Peripheral LBS sample by HD
I: 2 Sectors of 4096 bytes
I: alloc wra: 0, f70
I: data wra: 0, 10
I: SoftDevice Controller build revision:
I: fc de 41 eb a2 d1 42 24 |..A...B$
I: 00 b5 f8 57 9f ac 9d 9e |...W....
I: aa c9 b4 34 |...4
I: HW Platform: Nordic Semiconductor (0x0002)
I: HW Variant: nRF54Lx (0x0005)
I: Firmware: Standard Bluetooth controller (0x00) Version 252.16862 Build 1121034987
I: No ID address. App must call settings_load()
Bluetooth initialized
I: HCI transport: SDC
I: Identity: FF:75:86:D8:DA:AA (random)
I: HCI: version 6.1 (0x0f) revision 0x3069, manufacturer 0x0059
I: LMP: version 6.1 (0x0f) subver 0x3069
Advertising successfully started
Connected
W: Ignoring data for unknown channel ID 0x003a
I: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
I: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
I: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
Disconnected, reason 0x08
Connection object available from previous conn. Disconnect is complete!
Advertising successfully started

I have not yet created a pm_static.yml file for partitions. Sharing the auto generated file from the build folder.

 Please let me know what am I missing?

Fullscreen 8372.partitions.txt Download

EMPTY_0:
  address: 0xd800
  end_address: 0xe000
  placement:
    after:
    - mcuboot
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0x800
EMPTY_1:
  address: 0x162000
  end_address: 0x163000
  placement:
    after:
    - mcuboot_secondary
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0x1000
app:
  address: 0xe800
  end_address: 0xb8000
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0xa9800
bootconf:
  address: 0xffd080
  end_address: 0xffd084
  region: bootconf
  size: 0x4
mcuboot:
  address: 0x0
  end_address: 0xd800
  placement:
    align:
      end: 0x1000
    before:
    - mcuboot_primary
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0xd800
mcuboot_pad:
  address: 0xe000
  end_address: 0xe800
  placement:
    align:
      start: 0x1000
    before:
    - mcuboot_primary_app
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0x800
mcuboot_primary:
  address: 0xe000
  end_address: 0xb8000
  orig_span: &id001
  - mcuboot_pad
  - app
  region: flash_primary
  sharers: 0x1
  size: 0xaa000
  span: *id001
mcuboot_primary_app:
  address: 0xe800
  end_address: 0xb8000
  orig_span: &id002
  - app
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0xa9800
  span: *id002
mcuboot_secondary:
  address: 0xb8000
  end_address: 0x162000
  placement:
    after:
    - mcuboot_primary
    align:
      start: 0x1000
  region: flash_primary
  share_size:
  - mcuboot_primary
  size: 0xaa000
otp:
  address: 0xffd500
  end_address: 0xffd9fc
  region: otp
  size: 0x4fc
settings_storage:
  address: 0x163000
  end_address: 0x165000
  placement:
    after:
    - app
    align:
      start: 0x1000
    before:
    - end
  region: flash_primary
  size: 0x2000
sram_primary:
  address: 0x20000000
  end_address: 0x2002f000
  region: sram_primary
  size: 0x2f000

[AHaug]

Hi,

Could you enable logs in MCUBoot and see if you get a reason for the timeout there? Disconnected, reason 0x08 means that it's a timeout issue.

You say that it sometimes works and sometimes does not work. What's the difference between these two attempts?

Kind regards,
Andreas

[Haresh05]

Hi Andreas,

I enabled below logs in prj.conf but it does not dump anything related to disconnection.

CONFIG_MCUBOOT_UTIL_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_IMG_MANAGER_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_IMG_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_OS_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_ZBASIC_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
CONFIG_STREAM_FLASH_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y

Let me know if there is any other config which needs to be enabled.

AHaug said:

You say that it sometimes works and sometimes does not work. What's the difference between these two attempts?

I am doing nothing different in two attempts. The steps I follow is

1. Flash the image using vscode

2. Try to update using nRF DeviceManager app. 

Regards,

Haresh

[AHaug]

Hi,

Thanks for the answers

Haresh05 said:

I enabled below logs in prj.conf but it does not dump anything related to disconnection.

Does it dump anything new at all? I should've phrased myself differently in my initial reply, as I'm also curious about any output from the bootloader during the DFU procedure

Haresh05 said:

2. Try to update using nRF DeviceManager app. 

Do you see the same when using the nRF Connect app? https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-tools/nRF-Connect-for-mobile? This is the one we recommend for OTA testing, the device manager is just a reference application showcasing how you can implement a DFU feature in your own apps. nRF Connect for Mobile has better support for more features

Lastly, could you obtain and provide a sniffer trace for the BLE activity during DFU if the nRF Connect app does not give any different results?

Kind regards,
Andreas

[Haresh05]

Hi,

I tried with nRF Connect app and the OTA working as expected with the sample and with my custom application as well. I was using Device Manager app as it was suggested here.

Moreover, the sample sets CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU=y in prj.conf but it also mentions, "For your custom production project, we recommend that you look at what option CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU sets for you, and include the ones from there you need instead."

Can you guide me on what configs are necessary for my usecase?

Regards,

Haresh

[AHaug]

Haresh05 said:

I was using Device Manager app as it was suggested here.

Aha, that makes sense. I will discuss this with the author of the course. I'm sure they have their opinions of why to use the Device Manager instead of nRF Connect for Mobile 

Haresh05 said:

Moreover, the sample sets CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU=y in prj.conf but it also mentions, "For your custom production project, we recommend that you look at what option CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU sets for you, and include the ones from there you need instead."

Can you guide me on what configs are necessary for my usecase?

I'm not able to say what configs are necessary for your usecase since that may vary on factors that I'm not aware of but here's two angles to attempt to help you get enough confidence in what you need to have or not: 

Firstly: you can have a look at what the Kconfig selects and implies in the Kconfig reference search 

   

Some of these items are not applicable for all projects, but the _NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR config pulls in everything that we need in a basic NCS BLE OTA application.

Secondly: Another angle can be to have a look at this (unofficial) sample that I've created that showcases how to do this without this one size fits all sample configuration: https://github.com/aHaugl/samples_for_NCS/blob/main/bootloader/sysbuild/6_BLE/1_ble_fota/prj.conf. 

This sample is of course heavily based upon the academy, but mostly it uses the configurations from the smp server sample found in zephyr/samples/subsys/mgmnt/smp_svr: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/tree/main/samples/subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/smp_svr. Here you can see the basic prj.conf to add mcumgr configurations: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/blob/main/samples/subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/smp_svr/prj.conf and the BLE OTA prj.conf overlay for BLE OTA: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-zephyr/blob/main/samples/subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/smp_svr/overlay-bt.conf 

Docs for SMP server sample can be seen here: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/zephyr/samples/subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/smp_svr/README.html#smp-svr 

Kind regards,
Andreas