NRF52832 Firmware Upgrade using Esp8266

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi Team

I am trying to implement the firmware upgrade for master controller nrf52832 on chip using esp8266 over uart and I am very new with this boot-loader part.

I had gone through many examples and trying to understand the flow from where to start. Code had already implementation of DFU using nrf connect application and working, but now I need to do this using esp8266.

My flow is I will download the hex file from the server and then upgrade the hex file form esp8266 over uart.

I had seen the examples - secure_bootloader_dfu and iot example but still not able to understand the example.

Any help or suggestion in this.

[Matt]

Sounds like your Esp8266 plays the role of DFU controller. I've not touched DFU lately but I do find the DFU documentation back in SDKv11 very detailed and readable. There's also an DFU example using uart instead of ble for transferring the new firmware image. Checkout SDKv11 to see if that example helps with what you plan to do: Software Development Kit > Previous versions of nRF5 SDK > nRF5 SDK v11.0.0 > Examples > DFU bootloader examples > BLE & HCI/UART Bootloader/DFU > Architecture

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi can you suggest me the settings that I should do in bootloader file to enable the serial dfu.

[Matt]

I don't know if I can actually help with your code as I've not touched DFU since SDK12. I just downloaded sdk16 and shall see if I can compile the serial dfu example. You may want to consider getting technical support from Nordic folks also.

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

I was looking for technical support from Nordic folks itself, but they are not replying or updating.

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi Vaibhav,

Due to Christmas holidays in Norway we currently have lower staffing here in Devzone, but anyways I am sorry for the late reply.

Have you see this step by step guide for 'Getting started with Nordic's Secure DFU bootloader' written by one of my colleagues?

But as mention in section 5 of the guide: we currently don't have an official DFU master example code to run on an external controller, to for example update the nRF52 via UART as you want to do.

My colleague provides an example of a very simple UART DFU master for nRF52 which you can study and try to translate into your ESP8266 controller.

For the nRF chip (DFU target) you can take a look at the Secure DFU Bootloader over serial link example for a startpoint.

I hope the links I provided above can be of help for the time being and if you have any more questions we will be back with full staffing on the 2nd week of January.

Best regards,

Marjeris

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi msromero

Thanks for reply-

let me give you a brief of what I had tried and of what version I am using.

I already had a application built with softdevice version 5.0 so I want to implement this in that application.

Before going further I had tried to work this with latest SDK and latest softdevice.

In this I have been through the nordic forum for past days and able to compile and run the code and getting the led 3 glowing.

But when I go for serial programming It given the logs as

Timeout waiting for acknowledgement from the device.

Failed:  No data comes from serial port.

My hardware configurations are: tx pin as P0.6 and rx pin as P0.8, flow control disabled and baudrate is 9600.

Then I tried to enable the logs and it gives me error :

nrf_logs_backend_init(); : undefined refernce.

So I am not to go further with the code because I am not able to see what's happening inside the code.

So I used your hex file shared in the example code:

Logs are coming out.

when I tried to program it using nrfutil.exe - using baudrate 115200 and flowcontrol enabled with default pin configuration settings , Here is what I am getting:

1. Received Opcode is invalid

2. Sending ........(some value)

3. Received opcode is invalid

2. Sending ......... (some value)

So can you suggest how I should I go further.

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi All,

I have reached a step ahead where I need to transfer hex file from esp8266 to nrf52832 in dfu mode. 

But I am confused with the packet structure and flow of transfer of data. Can you help me in this. 

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi,

Did you see the DFU master example in the blogpost I pointed to? Can you explain more about where you are stuck at? The packet structure and how to test is explained in the documentation of the example.

First step is you need to make sure you can control the UART port on the ESP chip, maybe use a logic analyzer to have a closer look on what's on the UART lines.

BR,

Marjeris

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi

Yeah from you blog spot I got some help. 

I am stuck at:

I am able to put the nrf in DFU mode in which I can send the hex file using NRF Connect and also using ESP.

Using NRF Connect I am able to perform the DFU.

Using ESP - I am able to download the hex file from our server and store it in memory. Now I need to transfer the hex file to the NRF which is in DFU mode but what will be the packet structure I need to follow.

I has also commented the slip function as I realise they are only use to validate the data and I have my own way to validate the data received over uart.

I need to transfer the data to the function "on_packet_received" and found that this function has some states such as "SERIAL_DFU_OP_CODE_CREATE_OBJECT",  so I need to know what format of packet to be sent to NRF to get the things worked.

I am available for remote help also if anyone can help me out in this

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi can you please reply.

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply.

In the blogpost I linked to there is a document called 'DFU_SPI_readme.docx' which is the documentation for SPI DFU master code, this was  the documentation I was referring to. There is a link there where the DFU protocol and packet structure is explained, here. Have you read it?

The SLIP library is not only for validation, it performs encapsulation for encoding and decoding packets as defined in RFC1055. Our UART bootloader is configured to use SLIP, so I am not sure if it would be wise to not use it, unless you also modify the UART bootloader.

Best regards,

Marjeris