nrfutil for Border Router

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Jørgen Holmefjord — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 11:05:03 GMT

Not that I'm aware of, no. The source code of nrfutil is available on our GitHub, you can modify this to suit your needs, or threat it as an example implementation of the DFU server.

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Mary — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 18:31:39 GMT

I want to setup a DFU server on either the Border Router, or a PC with ethernet connectivity to the Border Router.

Are there any plans to modify nrfutil to provide a DFU server over ethernet?

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Jørgen Holmefjord — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 08:21:36 GMT

Hi,

I forwarded your questions to our Thread team, this is the feedback I got:

Though, if you plan to enable internet connectivity to the Thread Network, you may setup DFU server in the cloud and use unicast DFU, where nodes individually will poll a new software while available.

Unfortunately, there is no standard way of doing this, and so, in our examples we use CoAP – which should be treated as an example implementation of how it may be done.

When it comes to the question about default masterkey, that is true if you want to connect some random board to your PC and start to upgrade node’s firmware – you need to know masterkey in advance.

Though, if Border Router with NCP could be a part of a network, then NCP naturally knows masterkey and application (nrfutil) wouldn’t need to bother about this. This however might require some software changes.

If you want information about multicast DFU as well, I need to check this with the Thread DFU expert when he is back from vacation.

Best regards,
Jørgen

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Mary — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 14:03:29 GMT

I have read the Thread Secure DFU Example, tested it, and merged the client code into my application. From the documentation: "For example, the DFU server could be a cloud service, an nRF52840 Development Kit in conjunction with nrfutil, or a mobile phone running an application."

I don't want to ship my customer a Development Kit in order to perform an update in the field. So, I'm wanting a server that would run at my customer's site on a host computer. The same computer that would be communicating with the Thread nodes via the Border Router. Or, a server that would run on the Border Router.

I note that nRFConnect is an available Android app, but it doesn't support Thread, only BLE. Does there exist a DFU server application that communicates with a Thread network through the Border Router?

[quote userid="14926" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/36891/nrfutil-for-border-router/142593"][/quote]

Mary said:

Is there a way to set the master key as well as the panid and channel?

Is this question related to the DFU process, or are you asking this as a general question?

When running nrfutil on my PC with the Development Kit, I can set the panid and channel in the nrfutil command. It uses the default master key (0x00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff). So, if I formed my network with another master key (which we certainly would do in the field) the DFU doesn't work. I had to reform my network and recommission the target node using the default master key. So, I want to be able to set the master key, from nrfutil, to match that of my network.

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Jørgen Holmefjord — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:48:00 GMT

I would suggest that you read the Thread Secure DFU Example documentation thoroughly, it should explain how the Thread DFU process works in more details. I'm not aware of any examples showing DFU using a remote server. If you can provide some details on the specific use case you are looking into, I can check with our Thread developers if they have some more information.

[quote user="Mary"]Is there a way to set the master key as well as the panid and channel?[/quote]

Is this question related to the DFU process, or are you asking this as a general question?

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Mary — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 17:54:35 GMT

Is there an example showing how to perform DFU using a remote server?

How is this expected to be done in the field at a customer site?

Is there a way to set the master key as well as the panid and channel?

Mary

RE: nrfutil for Border Router

Jørgen Holmefjord — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 13:01:24 GMT

Hi,

You are correct that the library is compiled for x86 Linux and not ARM Linux. The pc-ble-driver library seems to only be used for checking/flashing the NCP firmware when doing Thread DFU. Even though you do not include the -f argument, you will get an error anyway when the application is trying to import the library, and it is not found.

You can try to remove the import of the library in the __main__.py file (/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/nordicsemi/__main__.py), and everything calling functions from this library.

The flasher library in pc-ble-driver is dependent on the J-Link ARM dll file for performing firmware flashing and memory operations. The J-Link SDK have not been available for ARM Linux architecture before. According to this post it should now be available, but without any support for the ARM version. I do not think we will add support for this until it is available in stable release, with support from Segger.

Best regards,
Jørgen