Several questions regarding the nRF52832 SoC SW development/firmware update/production programming

[EmbedSoft]

Dear DevZone users,

Let me start this Ticket with providing  the development setup I use:

OS: Windows 10 Professional

IDE: Segger Embedded Studio

Nordic board: nRF52832, HW Rev.PCA100040, V1.2.4, 201908

I'am starting with the nRF52832 board for the first time. On the forum I have read that this SoC have no pre-programmed bootloader.
And that the DFU bootloader is the first step to be programmed into the SoC with a J-Link adapter via SWD.
Is this correct? What I wanted to know are the following things:

1. Which communication interfaces does the secure DFU bootloader have to aid production programming?

2. For our end application, we want to use the Nordic BLE MCU for 2 things:
to update the BLE application firmware via it's DFU bootloader, and to use one of the nRF52832 I2C interfaces
to send a firmware update to a dsPIC microcontroller. The bootloader of the dsPIC has a UART or I2C interface.

3. How can we arrange the production programming facility to have multiple custom boards with equipped with nRF52832 chips programmed in parallel?
How many boards could we program in one program sequence with this arrangement?

4. Do we need a production programmer for this purpose, and if Yes, which type/model woul suit our needs?

Thank you for any help/advise/guidance!
I will appreciate this.

Best regards,

Max

[TylerD]

I'm also new to nRF52, but I guess I can comment on the question #1:

EmbedSoft said:

1. Which communication interfaces does the secure DFU bootloader have to aid production programming?

I think you're confusing production programming and field fw updates here. The production programming can be entirely handled via the ARM SWD debug interface. At initial programming, the target can be even blank (or you could even start the sequence by performing full erase to make the flash is blank).

DFU bootloader is needed for upgrades in the field. For example, using over-the-air (OTA) update you could upload a new firmware over Bluetooth connection.

Getting started with the kit, you can do lots of test and debug without DFU bootloader. DFU bootloader becomes essential when you are starting to work on how the field update of fw works.

Just my $0.02 on the topic. It's good to make clear distinction between production and field programming. 

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

3.  The IDAP-Link IDAP-M are great for parallel programming of the nRF5x series in production.  http://embeddedsoftdev.blogspot.com/p/idap-link.html.  You can connected multiple board to the same PC via USB hub.  The provided software will flash all connected at once.  1 USB3 hub can handle up to 10 boards.

[EmbedSoft]

Thanks  Tyler and Nguyen for your answers!

Now I have a better view on the whole picture.

Your right Tyler, production programming and fw-updates in the field are way different  things!

Regards,

Max