NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

lbe — Thu, 16 May 2019 08:31:27 GMT

Hello, I was able to fix the issue and to reprogram the board. In an old thread (sorry I lost the link...), I found someone complaining of a bricked NRF52....and a forum user for suggesting that maybe the firmware was doing weird things immediately after starting. I thought this could be the case, so what I did was to connect the programmer just an instant before the real programming started, so that the board itself was not powered before. After a few trials, I was able to time the connection correctly, so that I was able to flash a clean firmware and recover the NRF52.

I still don't understand why the --recover of nrfjprog was not able to do its work, but at least I was able to recover the bricked board.

Thansk for your suggestions.

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

Kenneth — Wed, 15 May 2019 15:08:48 GMT

May be some corner case, can you run:

nrfjprog --version
nrfjprog --recover --log

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

koniho — Wed, 15 May 2019 13:10:02 GMT

Is it possible that your application has configured a watchdog and triggering Errata 176: triggering https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/errata_nRF52832_Rev2/ERR/nRF52832/Rev2/latest/anomaly_832_176.html?cp=3_1_1_0_1_44 ?

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

lbe — Wed, 15 May 2019 12:46:51 GMT

It's the first time for me as well....so any suggestion would be appreciated.

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

Kenneth — Wed, 15 May 2019 12:37:00 GMT

It's the first I have seen of this, let me check with the team internally if they may have any suggestion.

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

lbe — Wed, 15 May 2019 12:08:35 GMT

Hello, I don't think this will do any good, because if I program the NRF52-DK or another board (a completely different layout, design and PCB) the chip does not get bricked, so I can in any case erase the memory and reflash with another firmware.

At this point, my guess is that as soon as I give power to the bricked board, the firmware inside starts doing something weird during the configuration of some pins....but can this entirely block the programmer from communicating with the NRF52?

RE: NRF52832 Bricked, nrfjprog Segmentation fault

Kenneth — Wed, 15 May 2019 12:02:24 GMT

Hi,

Is there any way we can recreate this here? E.g. can you share the hex file so I may program it to an nRF52-DK?

Best regards,
Kenneth