nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Jussi — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 07:05:22 GMT

Hi Florian and thank you for the answer.

I actually also tried to set the Windows timer resolution to 1ms with a third party app, but it did not improve the upload speed. I will try to play around with MTU settings if it could improve the speed closer to same what we have on Linux.

Br,

Jussi

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 06:08:18 GMT

Hi Jussi,

I see these errors also from time to time. I think more often from windows than from linux.

I suspect that it has something do, that the peripheral proposes a MTU and the central tries to send a MTU request at the same time. Then the pc-ble-driver somehow dismisses one of the message and doesn't forward the reply to the pc-ble-driver-py.

I saw this also on sniffer logs. The data packages seem to be sent correctly but the message is not delivered correctly on the PC side.

Could also be a timing issue as described in my other thread https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/56475/windows-notifications-stopped-with-high-mtu-in-pc-ble-driver-py

Regards,

Florian

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Jussi — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 13:39:47 GMT

Hi,

I tested to upload our firmware zip with a NRF52840DK board, and using

nrfutil 5.2.0 on linux takes ~50 seconds and nrfutil 6.0.1 on windows takes ~100 seconds.

Could this same issue be related to our problem?

I tried to use nrfutil 6.0.1 on linux to test the speed, but I can't get it to work:

pc_ble_driver_py.exceptions.NordicSemiException: MTU exchange request failed. Common causes are: missing att_mtu setting in ble_cfg_set, different config tags used in ble_cfg_set and connect.

The size of the firmware zip file is 254K. The connectivity firmware was updated to latest when using the nrfutil 6.0.1 on windows.

Br,

Jussi

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 19:39:24 GMT

Hello Florian,

Glad to hear that it was fixed. Again, thank you for reporting this bug.

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 08:31:48 GMT

Hi Edvin,

I just tested with nrfutil 6.0.1 and it is much better now.

Thanks for fixing it.

Florian

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 10:03:17 GMT

I understand. I have reported this to our team that write our tools. Hopefully, they will be able to patch it soon.

BR,

Edvin

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:52:52 GMT

Hi Edvin,

great that you can reproduce the issue.

If I can help to test a fix, please tell me.

The problem is, that when using pc-ble-driver-py with python 3, nrfutil 6 is a dependency so its not so easy to install an older version.

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 14:56:40 GMT

Hello Florian,

I took a sniffer trace today. You are correct. I compared the sniffer traces of nrfutil 6.0.0 and nRF Connect. Using nRF Connect the master (the DK that is used by nRF Connect) requests an MTU size of 247Bytes. Nrfutil also does this, but right after this request/response, nRF Connect requests LL_LENGTH_REQ (Data length extension) of 251 octets. Nrfutil doesn't do this.

I have reported this internally. I believe this issue is not present in nrfutilv5.0.0.

FYI our nrfutil team has updated the softdevice used in nrfutil 6.0.0, which is probably why this was left out by a mistake.

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 06:15:43 GMT

Hi Edvin,

It is nrfutil 6.0.0 installed from pip.

$ nrfutil -v -v -v version
nrfutil version 6.0.0
2019-12-12 06:58:39,406 PyPi URL: pypi.python.org/.../nrfutil
2019-12-12 06:58:39,406 GitHub URL: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/pc-nrfutil

I just had a look at the sourcecode, and I could run nrfutil also from the github repository, so if there would be some improvements, I can test them.

Florian

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 15:40:51 GMT

Can you please confirm what it prints when you write "nrfutil version". I don't mean to be rude, but I just want to know that we are looking at the same tools when we try to figure out the cause of the speed difference.

I don't know the details about nrfutil and what it uses or not. I have to dig into some documentation or source code, but I want to know what version to dig into first.

BR,

Edvin

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 09:52:39 GMT

Hi Edvin,

I'm definately using nrfutil 6.0.0.

Is DLE used in nrfutil? I can't find any reference in the pc-nrfutil repository to e.g. BLEGapDataLengthParams from pc-ble-driver-py.

Or is this a default setting to use DLE?

Florian

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 12:34:25 GMT

I don't think 2MBPs is supported in nrfutil, no, but it isn't in nRF Connect for Desktop either.

Can you please double check what version of nrfutil you have in your path? You can use the command "nrfutil version" from a folder that isn't in the same folder as nrfutil.exe, to make sure that you have the correct version in your path.

nrfutil and nRF Connect use a very similar FW. What was updated in a recent version (not sure which one) was that they started to use longer MTU and DLE, which significantly increases the speed.

BR,
Edvin

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 10:18:25 GMT

Hi Edvin,

unfortunately, I can't share the hexfile.

nrfConnect shows 8-9 kb/s.

With nrfutil, I stop only the time when the progress bar is visible. Usually, the connectivity fw is already flashed so I start it without -f.

Could it be the missing 2MBit mode in nrfutil? At least in pc-ble-driver-py it is not directly available. (https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/54895/phy-update-procedure)

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 09:43:31 GMT

Hello,

Do you have an application hex that I can try that is about the same size as the one you use?

What is the throughput (approximately) when you use nRF Connect for Desktop?

When you measure the time using nrfutil, do you time it from you see the progress bar, or from you start programming the connectivity board (the pca10056)?

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 15:15:25 GMT

Hi Edvin,

the .zip package has 230 kByte.

I just checked again with a stopwatch. It takes 2 minutes with nrfutil and 25 seconds with nrfConnect Desktop.

We are using SDK 15.0.0 for the app and the bootloader and s140_nrf52_6.0.0_softdevice.hex

The bootloader is minimally modified (jumps automatically after 5s into app), but no changes on the transmission code.

Could it be, thath the 2MBit mode is not used from nrfutil?

I tried changing the mtu but it doen't make a difference when setting it to 23 or 247. Perhaps it is always using 23?

-> I just saw when running with -v -v -v -v that the MTU change seems to work

2019-12-06 16:28:48,045 BLE: Enabling longer ATT MTUs
2019-12-06 16:28:48,105 ATT MTU exchanged: conn_handle=0 att_mtu=247
2019-12-06 16:28:48,105 New ATT MTU is 247
2019-12-06 16:28:48,106 BLE: Enabling Notifications

Best Regards,

Florian

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 13:03:26 GMT

Hello Florian,

I am struggling a bit with reproducing this. In my case it takes roughly the same time to transfer a DFU image using nRF Connect for Desktop and nrfutil. I didn't time it, but it was roughly 20 seconds, and nowhere near the 2 minutes.

Is your DFU image, i.e. the application particularly big, or similar to the size of the examples in the SDK?

Did you change anything in the bootloader? What SDK is the bootloader from, and what softdevice do you use?

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Florian Zierer — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 12:46:57 GMT

Hi Edvin,

the connectivity firmware on the nrf52840 DK was recently flashed.When using nrfConnect (2.6.2) another fw is flashed.

With nrfConnect the upload speed is similar as from a smartphone.

The target uses also nrf52840.

The non alpha version shows the same behaviour.

We tested this from Linux and Windows.

Florian

RE: nrfutil DFU upload extremely slow

Edvin — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 11:40:40 GMT

Hello,

So the device that is "connected" to nrfutil, the nRF52840 DK. Can you please test by using the same DK on nRF Connect for Desktop to perform the DFU? Is the speed the same there?

What nRF chip does your target use? I assume that this is not the issue, since it is faster using the smartphone.

The nRF52840 DK is erased at one point between two years ago and now? So that it is not running the nrfutil FW flashed 2 years ago? Try "nrfjprog -e" before the "nrfutil dfu ble ..."

So.

1. Please test nRF Connect for Desktop.

2. Please try to update nrfutil to the non-alpha version 6.0.0 found here.

Let me know about your results.

BR,
Edvin