dfu of nrf connect IOS doesn t work

[sarah_sdw]

Hello,

we are developing a machine that is in pre-production. We need to be able to update the firmware and until now all works well on android. but on IOS the dfu does not work.

I use the same device with the same firmware to update. it's ok on android nRF Connect for Mobile version 4.22.3

but does not work on IOS nRF Connect Version 2.0.2

it seems to me that it worked on IOS with version 1.8.8

I use:

nrf52832, SDK version: 15.3.0, Soft Device version: S132 V6.1.1

the device does not start in dfu target mode.. 

is there a problem with the IOS application? do I have to change something in my firmware to be compatible with the new version? 

thanks for the quick help ... we must soon produce our device.

[Hung Bui]

Hi Sarah, 

Could you capture a sniffer trace when you start doing DFU 

I assume you are doing DFU buttonless ? 

Do you support changing advertising name in your DFU buttonless application ? Do you have any modification in the buttonless library and the bootloader ? 

If you test with the stock DFU buttonless example in our SDK would it work ? 

Could you try to manually enable notification on the DFU buttonless characteristic and write 0104 into it? It should switch to DFU target. 

[sarah_sdw]

I don't make any changes to the dfu library and bootloader, but how do I check if the changing advertising name is supported?

[Hung Bui]

Do you use bonded or unbonded buttonless (ble_dfu_bonded.c or ble_dfu_unbonded.c) ? 

The handling of changing the advertising address is inside ble_dfu_buttonless_on_ctrl_pt_write() on DFU_OP_SET_ADV_NAME event. 

The reason we do this is to help the mobile app to recognize the device when it start advertising as in bootloader mode (DfuTarg name, by default). 

In the new app (v2.0.2) we don't have an option to turn this off but we are releasing new version that should come in a few days. 

If you can capture a sniffer trace of the DFU process we can have a clearer view of where the issue is. 

Are you planing to have your end customers to use nRF Connect app ?

If you are writing your own mobile app to do DFU this should be fixed easily as you can see if you do it manually by writing 0x0104 it would work fine. 

[sarah_sdw]

actually I use unbonded buttonless. 

but for the next step, I will have to allow the dfu only if the device and paired how to do it?

We will use our own application, so I think we will not have this problem because the dfu works in a manual way.

you will find the sniffer trace that I could do on android and IOS, with the same device and the same firmware.

ios.pcapngandroid.csvandroid.pcapngios.csv

[Hung Bui]

Hi Sarah, 

From the ios.pcapng I can see clearly the device crashed after the advertising name change request (packet 519). If you want you can try to add a breakpoint inside the handle of ble_dfu_buttonless_on_ctrl_pt_write() to check why it crashes (and reset). 

The reason we added the device name change request is that when you have multiple device which can advertise as DFUTarg, you may not be able to detect which one you should connect to and do DFU. So we give the unique name instead. So it depend on your use case, if the chance of having multiple device all switch to DFU mode at the same time is small, I think it's fine to not changing the name. 

[sarah_sdw]

Hi tanks for answers, 

Ok, we can accept this. so how should I do not change my name?

I commented the code in the ca DFU_OP_SET_ADV_NAME and returned DFU_RSP_SUCCESS but it does not seem to work

[Hung Bui]

Hi Sarah, 

I'm not quite sure I understand what you meant by "I did not manage to make that he does not change his name and that the dfu works on IOS" 

As far as I can see we only change the name in the unbonded DFU. There is no point of doing name change with bonded DFU. 

The app suppose to not sending name changing with the bonded DFU. But the application if you use ble_dfu_bonded.c will ignore it anyway. 

We need to debug the code on the nRF52 to see why it crashed. Could you try to debug and check if there is an assertion and where it happens ? You can follow the debug guide here. 

 

Besides setting NRF_DFU_BLE_BUTTONLESS_SUPPORTS_BONDS = 1 in buttonless application, have you made sure you also use NRF_DFU_BLE_REQUIRES_BONDS  = 1 in the bootloader and recompile it ? 

I would suggest to test with the unmodified buttonless example. Please follow the instruction here. 

[sarah_sdw]

Hello, 

1)

I meant that I can not get the unbonded dfu running on IOS.

than what I have to do so that the name does not change and that the unbonded dfu also works on IOS.

2)

with bond dfu, the application crash on line nrf_dfu_set_peer_data() in function enter_bootloader()...
a HardFault happens

[Hung Bui]

We will have a new version of nRFConnect on iOS releasing (v2.0.3) early next week. The option to disable name change will be included. 

With bonded dfu, have you made sure you included NRF_DFU_BLE_REQUIRES_BONDS  = 1 in bootloader and flash the bootloader ? 

Have you tried to test with the unmodified buttonless with bond example ?