nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 11:48:47 GMT

I think we finally found the issue: nrfutil (and maybe also nrf connect) is somehow using the Windows system timer. The timer interval can be modified by software like https://github.com/tebjan/TimerTool. the default timer interval is 15ms, but different software packages (remote desktop, teamviewer, vmware ...) change it to 1 ms.

On a Windows system where the timer interval is 15 ms, a dfu operation is about 4 to 6 times slower compared to a Windows system where the timer interval is 1 ms...

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 14:17:02 GMT

Unfortunately not...

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

Victor — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 10:38:29 GMT

I do have the same problem you describe: The time which an update takes on a computer is not predictable. It varies form 3 to 6 min (updating SD, BL and APP). Did you find any issues/ workarounds?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:44:10 GMT

Hi, I used the same nrf board on both computers (PCA10040). The Segger software and all relevant drivers are exactly the same on both computers. I also checked the COM port driver settings in the registry. Again everything is exactly the same.

I have seen similar issues with virtual COM ports over USB (FTDI) in other projects. Different USB chipsets caused very different throughput through the serial port.The performance differences seemed to depend a lot on which functions were used to read from and write to the serial port.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

Hung Bui — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 12:08:29 GMT

Sorry for the late response. I was on vacation. I haven't experienced similar issue with the COM port before. I assume you use same nRF5 board on both computer ? Which board did you use ? Could you check which Segger firmware you have on the production computer ? There could be a chance that the firmware of the Segger chip on the nRF5 board is not compatible with the Segger driver on the production computer. You may need to use Jlink Configurator to update the firmware of the segger chip. I would suggest to update the Segger Jlink to latest version.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 16:21:28 GMT

No ideas?

I checked the serial port traffic with serial port monitor and it seems that on my computer, a serial port read action takes 1 - 2 ms. On another computer it always takes a fixed 15 ms. Could this be due to some Segger serial port driver configuration?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 15:54:30 GMT

Hi, I tried the java script and it's faster indeed. However, i ran into another problem:

if i run the script from my computer, the dfu takes about 30s
if i run the script from another computer (our production setup), the dfu takes about 1min20s
if i connect from my computer through remote desktop to that other computer, the dfu takes again 30s...

The same behavior can also be observed using nrfutil.

Any idea why the dfu process could be running slower on another computer, and why this would be solved connecting with remote desktop? I'm guessing it has something to do with the serial port driver, but could not find any explanation for now...

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

Hung Bui — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 11:50:56 GMT

Hi bds,

It's very unfortunate that the developer who worked on DFU on nrfutil moved. So I couldn't get hold of him. I had a look in the code and seems that it may requires some change in the lower level at pc_ble_driver_py library . You can have a look here at line 322. We send a write command and we wait for a TX_COMPLETE event before we continue. This explains why the nrfutil only send one packet per event.

It's possible to modify that and queue more packet and don't wait for TX_COMPLETE. Then retry when the buffer is full.

If you don't want to implement that, I would suggest to simply reduce the connection interval, for now it's 30 ms, you can change it to 7.5 ms and will have the update 4 times faster. To change connection interval you need to modify BLEGapConnParams in on_gap_evt_adv_report() in dfu_transport_ble.py. And update MIN_CONN_INTERVAL and MAX_CONN_INTERVAL in nrf_ble_dfu.c in the bootloader.

Another, better solution is simply use the node.js javascript that used in nRFConnect to do the updating. And you can do it on commandline. Have a look here, you can find the syntax

node dfu.js FF:11:22:33:AA:BF ./dfu/dfu_test_app_hrm_s132.zip

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 08:42:58 GMT

Hi, any update here? I checked the python sources for nrfutil, but could not find a way to force multiple packets per conenction interval...

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

Hung Bui — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:32:30 GMT

Since the source code for both nRFConnect and nRFUtil are available on Github, there is an option that you take these code and either take the code from NRFConnect and make it commandline, or modify the code in nRFUtil to make it send more packet.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with both of them and we have reduced staff in this period so I couldn't help.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:57:23 GMT

Ok, thanks for the follow up.

I suppose there is no other command line DFU possibility?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

Hung Bui — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:42:00 GMT

Hi bds, sorry for the late response. Our developer who made the nrfutil DFU is away the whole March.

But what I can see is from the trace is that the nRFutil only send 1 packet per connection event. When the nRFConnect can send multiple (usually 4) that's why you found that it's much faster with the nRFConnect.

We will try to fix it but not until the developer comes back. Could you leave a reply here in April so we can check with him, just in case I forgot.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:07:41 GMT

Any news on this?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bjorn-spockeli — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 15:01:55 GMT

Ok, then we can rule out the ATT MTU size. I will have to follow this up with the developer.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 13:46:37 GMT

From the log files nRF Connect uses 23 bytes ATT MTU.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bjorn-spockeli — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 13:41:45 GMT

@bds: nRF Connect requests the peer to increase the ATT MTU size. If this request is supported by the peer then you'll see an increased throughput. As far as I understand it, this is not requested by nrfutil and I also do not know if or when this will be added. I have asked the developer to clarify this and will update this thread when I get his reply.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 09:45:07 GMT

Any update on this?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 10:27:57 GMT

I checked with 2.1.0 and the result is exactly the same: about 4 times slower than nrf connect. Any other ideas?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 08:08:44 GMT

Is it possible to supply a precompiled exe like the one I found here for 2.0.0?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bjorn-spockeli — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 13:26:37 GMT

Could you try to update to the latest version of pc-nrfutil, i.e. v2.1.0, and see if that resolves the issue?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:57:03 GMT

I checked the nrf connect logs, and the connection interval settings are exactly the same.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bjorn-spockeli — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:55:51 GMT

nrfutil uses the following conenction interval, min_conn_interval_ms = 15 and max_conn_interval_ms = 30. I think this is the default connection interval used by nRF Connect, but could you check? If the connection intervals are identical, then there might be some differences regarding how NRF Connect and nrfutil communicates with the connectivity firmware on the nRF5x device on the pc side.

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:50:39 GMT

nrfutil.exe 2.0.0

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bjorn-spockeli — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:49:32 GMT

and which version of pc-nrfutil are you using?

RE: nrfutil dfu very slow compared to nrf connect dfu

bds — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 10:39:10 GMT

nrf connect v1.1 on windows 7 desktop