Loading nrf52840 software on Particle.io Boron, Argon and Xenon hardware

[rocksetta]

I have 3 Nordic nRF52840 usb dongles but I also have about 30 Particle Mesh devices. I wish to install some of my software that works on the USB the dongles onto the Particle Mesh devices.

All the Particle.io Mesh products (Boron-cellular, Argon-wifi, Xenon-only Mesh) have the nRF52840 SOC on their board. I wish to load some of the Nordic examples on their hardware, but some minor changes in how Particle installs software makes this very difficult. Is anyone at Nordic familiar with their products and have any suggestions for installing Nordic examples?

I don't own a j-tag connector, wondering if things can be done with the USB connection?

The two main issues are:

1. Most Nordic compiled files are in .hex format, Particle however first uses a berkely .elf format that is then converted into a binary .bin format

This code works but not sure if the .bin is correct to be installed.

arm-none-eabi-objcopy output/nrf52840/bin/ot-ncp-ftd -S -O binary output/nrf52840/bin/ot-ncp-ftd.bin 

2. The Particle bootloader is not recognised by NRF connect, which Nordic bootloader might work and how would I install it.

particle flash --serial myBootLoader.bin 

works for loading a Particle bootloader using the particle-cli software

[Patrick]

I think the easiest solution will probably be to get a j-link (edu mini is very inexpensive) for programming. I use a Xenon for all of my nRF52840 development but never tried to develop within their ecosystem.

If you're determined to use the particle bootloader I'd probably start digging into their make files (or equivalent) and see what command they are running to get the correct binary. At the very least you'll need to adjust memory start addresses in the linker script to match their flash and ram start points to avoid overwriting the particle bootloader.

[rocksetta]

Quick question Patrick, which bootloader do you use with the Xenons. I would really like to be able to download it and try to get it working on my xenons

[Patrick]

So far I am not using any bootloader with my Xeons, just applications. I started playing around with the open bootloader Friday but did not have much time to experiment with it this past weekend.