nRF5 to Mesh Upgrade

[Aftab]

Hello,

We have selected nRF solution for our next product line and currently evaluating the software/SDK setup for that.

We are testing following SDKs:

nRF5_SDK_15.2.0_9412b96 and nrf5SDKforMeshv310src.

I have a few questions:

1. If a device is programmed with nRF5 SDK and later we want to upgrade it to Mesh SDK, can we do it through OTA?

2. Once a device is upgraded to Mesh SDK, will it remain compatible with the non-mesh nRF5 SDK devices?

Thanks.

[Bjørn Kvaale]

1) Yes, you should be able to upgrade to mesh SDK from the nRF5 SDK. You will need to upgrade the bootloader, as the bootloader is different between the nRF5 SDK & the mesh SDK. You will then also need to use the correct softdevice for the specific mesh version, as well as upgrade the mesh application. However, it seems there may be some issues with upgrading the device page. Also, this seems like quite a complicated operation.

2) If you want to have mesh device compatibility with regular BLE, it might be a good idea to either use the proxy node functionality or integrate mesh functionality in a nRF5 application or vice versa. This way, it will most likely be quite a bit easier to do a DFU of the application code. You would then most likely only need to do a firmware update of the application & not the bootloader and softdevice.

[Aftab]

1) Say we have a regular SDK device in field. Can we upgrade it to Mesh without using JTAG? We want to upgrade it to Mesh in field over the air.

2) By proxy node you mean a node that converts Mesh protocols to regular BLE?

[Bjørn Kvaale]

1) Yes, this should be possible. You would need to update the application to be mesh compatible. Beware that you will need to do all future DFUs over BLE, as the BLE bootloader does not support Mesh DFU.

2) Yes, a proxy node is essentially a translator node that can communicate with the mesh network & with a GATT BLE based device such as a smartphone.