Run nrfutil dfu on a Raspberry Pi

[RedNodeLabs]

Dear Community,

I am working on the following application: using the RaspberryPi to flash over-the-air nRF52 nodes (Nordic's Secure DFU BLE bootloader)

For that I have connected a PCA10056 to a RPi3, and now I am trying to use nrfutil to flash the nodes over BLE.

Unfortunately, it seems to be that the pc-ble-driver is not precompiled and working for the RPi ARM architecture. So my following step would be to build that from source code.

I had a first try but I was not successful. I am not sure if all the dependencies/tools are ready for the RPi. In the following post I have read that someone already did that:

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/25402/how-to-arm-cross-compile-pc-ble-driver

Could you please explain how can we make it working on the RPi or even better to provide a guide showing how we can work with all your tools for nRF52 from a RPi computer?

I think it could be really interesting for the makers community.

Thank you in advance,

Javier

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

Compiling for Raspberry Pi have been done for an old version, see this blog post. I have not tested this myself, and I'm not aware if this have been done on later versions, however I do not see why it should not work.

Can you describe your process for compiling and what issues you are facing? Are you trying to build pc-ble-driver, or pc-ble-driver-py?

Best regards,
Jørgen

[RedNodeLabs]

The next problem that rises:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/nrfutil", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('nrfutil==5.1.0', 'console_scripts', 'nrfutil')()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Click-7.0-py2.7.egg/click/core.py", line 764, in __call__
    return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Click-7.0-py2.7.egg/click/core.py", line 717, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Click-7.0-py2.7.egg/click/core.py", line 1137, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Click-7.0-py2.7.egg/click/core.py", line 1137, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Click-7.0-py2.7.egg/click/core.py", line 956, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Click-7.0-py2.7.egg/click/core.py", line 555, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/nrfutil-5.1.0-py2.7.egg/nordicsemi/__main__.py", line 1129, in ble
    flasher = Flasher(serial_port=port, snr = jlink_snr)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pc_ble_driver_py-0.11.4-py2.7.egg/pc_ble_driver_py/ble_driver.py", line 1063, in __init__
    raise NordicSemiException('nrfjprog not installed')
pc_ble_driver_py.exceptions.NordicSemiException: nrfjprog not installed

and the question: how could I use nrfutil in the RPi if there is no support of nrfjprog for that platform?

Thank you again for your support.

Javier

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

I'm not sure exactly what cause the cmake error, looks like it cannot find the path or something. Did you clone the pc-ble-driver repository into the pc-ble-driver-py directory, and checkout the required commit/version?

You are correct that nrfutil is not supported on ARM platforms, however the nrfjprog dependency can be removed from the pc-ble-driver-py code if you make sure that the correct connectivity firmware is flashed to the chip before running the applications. It should only be used to check and flash the correct connectivity firmware.

[RedNodeLabs]

Yes, I checked out pc-ble-driver-py @ v0.11.4 and found those issues building from source.

Are there any plans in your team or in your roadmap to support these nordic tools on ARM platforms?

In my opinion, it would be a really nice-to-have feature for the community of developers working with your great nRF5 chips.

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Did you check if you have the pc-ble-driver directory in your cloned repo and that it actually contains any files? Git does not clone linked repos automatically unless you pass the '--recursive' argument.

I'm currently not aware of any roadmaps to add support for ARM platforms to nrfjprog, I think this will depend on if the J-Link SDK will be supported on ARM.

[WineRex]

Please count me as one who would like to use nrfjprog on my RPi tester. We chose to use the RPi for our tester for its cost and size. Other chip manufacturers have provided command line utils for the RPi (ARM). You should too!  Thanks. 

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

You can use the J-Link tools directly if you want to do operations on the chips from Raspberry Pi, they provide a Linux ARM version of the J-Link software pack.