How to stop softdevice so I can write to flash

[David Andresky]

Hi,

I am working from an existing code base where I had to add the s130 softdevice and BLE scanning capabilities. I have an area of flash that stores application data that I need to update but the existing code base uses nrf_nvmc which locks up the firmware once the softdevice is enabled.

I am developing in SDK 12.3 with the S130 softdevice.

I have looked at the fstorage module but it would require me to make significant changes to the code and I need release quickly. I had hoped I could just shutdown or disable the softdevice and then write to flash using the existing code (nrf_nvmc) but I keep getting assert errors from the softdevice.

I have tried sd_softdevice_disable and softdevice_handler_sd_disable to no avail. In a similar situation I had to write to UICR and disabling the softdevice was sufficient, but I can't write to any other area of flash without the assert error.

How can I shutdown the softdevice so that I can write to flash with nrf_nvmc? I do not need to restart it as I will be resetting the device after I finish all flash operations.

Thanks

[David Andresky]

I found the issue. We have a python script that generates a header file with a memory map. This memory map is referenced throughout our code, including our bootloader. The internal flash area that I am trying update stores the execution address for the main code. When I call sd_flash_erase(), the value for the execution address is temporarily all FF's. When the softdevice generates the flash operation event it caused the bootloader to feed a bogus address to the interrupt handler causing the program counter to go off into the weeds. I hard coded the address in the bootloader and was able to get past this problem.

We can close the issue.