over the air versus Jlink programming

[wim]

Hi

I have been reading for a few days now, through the nrf51 documentation, the forum, and getting a bit of a grip on the proposed concepts in the DK. However, what I do not really get yet is the following: is the over the air programming equivalent to programming using a Jlink? And how does the soft device fit into this? Should I see the soft device really as a separate program? Is it programmed to the flash separately?

As an example: If I want to put the blinky example project, on the beacon kit hardware, over the air, will that work? Will the boot loader then be removed, or is it also sitting there separately? Or can I only program the blinky example project to the beacon kit via a Jlink programmer? Does the blinky example use the actual soft device stack? Or is it just a basic single file 'hello world' type of controller project?

Or is it more like I am used to on simple controllers: the soft device is just a piece of flash which is merged into the main flash. But what about the wireless flashing then? Is that really a boot loader in a protected part of the flash? And how is a device put in 'boot loader mode'?

Maybe all obvious or silly questions, but I just did not find an answer. Maybe the confusion is caused partly because of the difference between the nrf51 DK on one hand, and the beacon kit on the other hand. The beacon kit does not give access to the SDK, while for the nrf51 DK, the SDK is the basis. Is the embedded software of the beacon kit example a sub set of the SDK?

Can anyone clarify?

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

Over the air programming has the advantage that it lets an end user update the FW via e.g. a smartphone if needed. This gives the developer an opportunity to release updated FW to existing users.

The beacon kit comes pre-programmed with a bootloader and the softdevice as opposed to the development kits. This is required for enabling over the air firmware update. Otherwise you would have to program the bootloader+softdevice with a J-link for the first time programming in order to enable OTA programming for later use. I recommend spending some time reading DFU documentation here to get a better understanding of the DFU concepts.

Using a J-link programmer is more suited for development as it offers much more debugging features and flash download speed. The development kit comes with an on-board Segger J-link lite programmer. So normally you would use this during development of your firmware, and add the DFU as an additional product feature.

Any Segger J-link programmer can be used to program the beacon kit. See chapter 5.5.4 in Beacon UG for the appropriate connector. Note that the nRF51 DK has a "debug out" header that can be used to target external boards with nRF51 chips as well.

The memory arrangement with softdevice s110, bootloader and application is described in chapter 9 and 10 in S110-SDS

[wim]

Ok, I will read the DFU documentation. Maybe you could answer this quick question: Just to have a starting point, as I have not received the DK yet (it is on its way), I wanted to try the following: compile the blinky example, change the IO's to match the LED's on the beacon kit, and then use the over the air programming feature of the beacon kit to program the beacon kit with the blinky example. Would this work?

And a second question: the programming via Jlink, is it just 1 hex or bin file which is programmed, for boot loader, soft device and application, or are these 3 things programmed separately?