S120 + bootloader

[Jacob Portukalian]

Hi,

Looking at the manuals for the S110 and S120 soft devices, I don't see mention of the bootloader in the S120 manual. Does S120 support bootloaders?

I want to make a central device that can connect to a computer where the computer is acting as the peripheral, but then have the computer update the firmware over the air on the central device, so do the OTA DFU but for a central, not a peripheral.

Is this possible?

Thanks,

Jacob

[Petter Myhre]

The S120 supports bootloaders. The SDK bootloader can be used to do DFU over UART, with some small modifications.

We have an example for doing DFU OTA with the S110 (peripheral), but not for the S120 (central). Theoretically it shouldn't require too big an effort to modify to the S120.

The peripheral would be a GATT client instead of a GATT server, and the central would be a GATT server instead of a GATT client. Then you could reuse the DFU Service. This is possible because the GAP roles are independent of the GATT roles, see this question for more information. The advertising/connection procedure would also be done differently.

The problem is that most smart phones and tablets (Android, Win8), and other devices don't support the peripheral role, then it is just not possible. The exception is iOS which supports it, so it could be possible to make an app for it, but we don't have this app.

We are developing a new version of the S120 that will support the peripheral role, in addition to the central role (not concurrently like the S130). This will make DFU OTA much more trivial. A production release is expected in the end of October.

[Tony Lee]

As I know, the production release of S120 support the peripheral role now. which version of bootloader can support OTA DFU with S120 in peripheral role? Thanks.