how to program nRF52832 via uart

[bigezio]

I am designing a board with a host cpu and Nordic nRF52832 as companion chip in order to have Bluetooth capabilities; the two SoCs are connected each other through the uart.

I have read in

• infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp

that the [programming] addresses must be writeable by the production programming tools. Users expect these to be written when the hex file is programmed by the programmer. It is bad practice for application to write these values at run time.

These section makes me think I need a sort of bootloader in order to perform nRF52832 programming when the the upgrade firmware is available via uart only.

Am I correct?

[Matt]

I believe you need to have a bootloader in the N52 chip and your host cpu running as the bootloader controller to send the image file through the uart. I once read the bootloader documentation in SDK11 (especially the serial bootloading portion) so you may want to check it out there. There is also some major bootloader changes since SDK12 so go through that one too if you have time to do so.

[AmbystomaLabs]

I believe the DFU examples support UART in addition to OTA. An easy approach might be to put the nRF into dfu mode via the uart then do update over uart. DFU is pretty easy to code and work into a custom solution. Plus this way it can act as a loader if the application code gets messed up or maybe isn't loaded yet (eg, during production). Also with the multi bank solution there is safety in the transfer so you can't brick the device.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

As mentioned in the comments, you need a bootloader to update the firmware over UART. SDK 13 and above provide serial secure DFU bootloader example, in addition to BLE secure DFU bootloader (for OTA DFU).

[bigezio]

dear Matt and dear AmbystomaLabs, thanks for your feedback. Ezio

[bigezio]

Dear Jorgen Holmefjord,

thanks for your answer.

So basically I need to

1. have a bootloader in my design (that makes my main application start or takes care for the upgrade)

2. emulate on the host cpu what can be done on a PC with the command

nrfutil dfu serial -pkg package.zip -p COM_PORT

Am I correct?