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.

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

I am using Keil v5 now, and error I am getting is Fail to download  flash - "Cortex-M4"

[Hung Bui]

Please try to do an "nrfjprog.exe --eraseall" in the command line. 
You can also find the .hex file in the build folder and flash it manually using either nrfjprog or use nRF Connect programmer tool.

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Hi 

I am successful to get the debug logs and I found that after sending the INIT file, what I observed that when device is trying to write the update dfu settings then device got stuck and also it is happening during flash erase only.

But when I do same over BLE its working, code won't stuck and erase successful works.

I am not able to understand the reason behind this, is there any difference between Ble DFU and Serial DFU which makes this happens

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

    if (    ((page_addr & (p_fs->p_flash_info->erase_unit - 1)) != 0)
        ||  !addr_within_bounds(p_fs, page_addr, (len * p_fs->p_flash_info->erase_unit)))
    {
	
        return NRF_ERROR_INVALID_ADDR;
    }
    print(LL_INFO,"333333\n");
    return (p_fs->p_api)->erase(p_fs, page_addr, len, p_context);

This code is not returning during execution of OP command in serial DFU mode but working in BLE DFU .

I am not able to understand the reason, any suggestions please!

[Hung Bui]

Please check if you have the softdevice when you test with the serial DFU ? 
Without softdevice, the flash storage library to be used is nrf_fstorage_nvmc.c . 

If there is the softdevice , then flash storage backend library to be used is nrf_fstorage_sd.c 

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Softdevice is present. But I had a doubt that why it is working in BLE mode but not in Serial mode. 

[Hung Bui]

It's been a few months so I would need to have an update of what you are working on. 

On the bootloader side, did you modify anything  ? Have you tried to test doing DFU to a unmodified bootloader from PC (instead of ESP) ?

On the DFU master side, have you managed to build it ? Have you tested that with unmodified bootloader ? 
Which SDK version are you working on ? 
Are you combining BLE DFU bootloader and UART DFU bootloader ? 

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

On bootloader I didn't make any changes:

I am using SDK 14.2 that supports BLE DFU and Serial DFU both.

Yes with PC using NRF util I am getting same response.

DFU master I had studied that packet protocol that needed to be sent and design a logic accordingly.

After more debugging  I had observed that - 

sd_flash_page_erase(p_op->erase.page + p_op->erase.progress);

This function is not returning only in case of serial dfu but working fine in BLE DFU.

[Hung Bui]

I'm not aware of an example in SDK v14.2 that support both BLE and Serial. From where you got it ? 

Again, please try to always test with stock example first and make sure it works before you test with anything else. 

[Vaibhav_Bansal]

Apologies for not making myself clear.

I meant is Serial DFU and BLE DFU are present in Examples in SDK14.2. 

What I am doing is, I had a code that supports BLE DFU and working fine. In the same code I had enable the Serial DFU also. But only use one at a time, either use BLE or use Serial.

In the field I don't have any BLE connections at client site so in that case I will using Serial DFU to upgrade my nrf firmware and where BLE is available I will be using BLE DFU.

I have to implement those feature in same firmware because I am not aware which device will be going to client, so all devices should support both.

So, after all I did I am getting this error that I had mentioned earlier.

Is there any way to resolve this error because my DFU controller is ready for testing, only this error is causing problems.

Please suggest what should I do in this.

Currently I am trying with example for Serial DFU mentioned in SDK 14.2 will share the results here.