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?

[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.