Program on Thingy52

[mich_x]

I am starting with Thingy and I am having some troubles. Background is I have done some work with nRF52840 that sends beacons one-by-one with different payloads. And then receive the beacons and do decode. I am trying to do the same on Thingy but I cannot find startup examples. And I have several problems with Thingy.

First, I am not familiar with the words using across the materials, like firmware and bootloader. I have read the article about FW architecture from the infocenter, but I still have questions about it. Like, for my need, do I need to change the FW? And/or the bootloader? Second, I don't know how to flash a program onto the Thingy, it appears that you can use OTA with another 52DK to flash, is this correct? Third, I am using Thingy with 52832. Can I use S140 on it?

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Hi mich_x. Firmware is essentially software (SW) which is designed for a specific piece of hardware. So for the Nordic Thingy, the firmware is the SW that makes the Thingy:52 do the things it can do. The SW has been specifically designed to work for the Nordic Thingy:52. A basic bootloader executes an application located at a specific memory location (see the bootloader module for more info). You will most likely need to change the FW to run the Thingy as a beacon, yes. To run custom FW on the Thingy, you will need use the secure dfu bootloader. Also, take a look at this link for compiling new FW for the Thingy. As the Thingy FW is based off of SDK v13, you should take a look at SDK 13 examples if you want to use the Thingy as a beacon.

For flashing the Nordic Thingy FW onto the Thingy, you can either use Over the Air DFU or use a wired connection. See this link for more info on OTA-DFU. See this link for more info on the wired connection option.

Regarding the softdevice, you cannot use the S140 Softdevice on it. You will need to use the s132 v4.0.2 Softdevice.

[mich_x]

Thank you very much. This helps a lot

[Bjørn Kvaale]

If you were happy with the answer, would you mind upvoting it & pressing the check mark please? :)

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Thanks! Have a nice day! :)

[mich_x]

I notice that in your answer, you said if I want to flash the Nordic Thingy FW, I can use OTA or wire connection. So, if I want to flash my own FW, does this change the method? To my understand, I cannot re-flash my FW OTA.