Updating an nRF52 application over the air with OTA DFU

[Ran Ratson Kohavi]

Hello,

I'm using IAR 8.22.1, SDK 15.0.0, S132, nRF Connect V4.19.2.

I've loaded the 'secure_bootloader' example to PCA10040 EVB.

The device is recognized as DFUTARG and is connected to the smartphone.

I've copied image 'hrs_application_s132.zip' file to the smartphone.

The problem is that when performing DFU start-> Select file type->Distribution packet (ZIP) and selecting the zip file - nothing happens.

Please help me to figure out what is the problem.

Thanks in advance.

[Ran Ratson Kohavi]

Well, I've installed nRF Toolbox and now I can select the file, but when choosing 'Select device' and pressing 'SCAN' it returns error "Permission denied".

Any help with this will be gratefully accepted.

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Have you taken a look at this excellent blog post? If you follow all of the steps carefully, the DFU should work out of the box. What kind of a phone are you testing this with? Which Android version are you using?

[Ran Ratson Kohavi]

Thank a lot for your reply.

I'll follow the blog post.

My phone is HUAWEI, Android 7.0 NRD90M.

[Ran Ratson Kohavi]

Hello Bjorn,

The post is great, I've done all steps successfully - up to step D3.

In step D3 I got the same results as reported above:

With nRF Connect when selecting the ZIP file - nothing happens.

With nRF Toolbox when pressing 'Select device' and 'SCAN' - returns error "Permission denied".

What's wrong?

Snapshots of nRF Toolbox:

1. The device is recognized correctly:

2. The ZIP file selected correctly:

3. Can't select device nor SCAN- "Permission denied":

EDIT: BTW, the nRF Toolbox version is 2.6.0 and in DFU\About I found this:

Does it not supporting nRF52832 and S132?!

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Is the Huawei a P9 or a P9 lite? We have noticed some issues regarding these phones, so do you by any chance have another phone to test the DFU with? That way, we can check if a small mistake was made when you followed the blog post or whether it is the phone that is causing the issues.

[Ran Ratson Kohavi]

hello Bjorn,

I had a mistake, my phone is Xiaomi, Redmi Note 4, Android 7.0 NRD90M, MIUI version: MIUI Global 9.2 (9.2.1.0 NCFMIEK).

[Bjørn Kvaale]

As I mentioned previously, do you have another phone to test the DFU with? That way, we can check to make sure you have done all of the steps correctly. If the DFU works with the other phone, then we know that you have done all of the dfu steps correctly & that there could be an issue with your phone. Then, we can continue looking at the issue then.

[Ran Ratson Kohavi]

Hello Bjorn,

I was trying to insert a video with no success (MP4 ~100MB). If you can give me an E-mail address to send the video it will be great.

I've tested with Galaxy S8, Model:SM-G950F, Android version 8.0.0.

After selecting the ZIP file of ble_app_hrs project, the following messages were populated:

1. Starting DFU.

2. Starting bootloading.

3. Connecting

When it stopped, I disconnected from device, and pressed SCAN.

I thought I should recognize the device as HRS service but the device was recognized as DfuTarg.

Do I have a misunderstanding with the DFU process or something is not working properly here?

Best regards.

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Did you follow the blog post I linked to step by step? Did you test the ble_app_hrs project by erasing the dev kit, only flashing the softdevice & the application to the dev kit first & see if that works? 

From what you are explaining, it seems that the DFU failed to complete since the device is advertising as "DFuTarg" instead of "Nordic_HRM". This is most likely why the device goes back into bootloader mode instead of advertising "Nordic_HRM". 

Do you have any logging information that you could upload? Does the DFU complete to 100% in nrf connect?

Which --sd-req code are you using for the softdevice when you create the zip package using nrfutil in Step C2 of the blog post? If you are using s132 v6 softdevice, it should be 0x00a8. You can also use the command: nrfutil pkg generate --help

or load the softdevice to your dev kit & check the softdevice code using nrf go studio or nrf programmer app in nrf connect for pc.