The firmware of dongle nRF52840

[Anthony Ch.]

Good day, support!

I have a couple of questions regarding the firmware of the nRF52840 dongle.

1) How to identify the firmware version that is nRF Connect flashing (by its tool Programmer)?

2) What is the difference between nRF Connect firmware (flashing by its tool Bluetooth Low Energy) and connectivity_4.1.1_usb_with_s140_6.1.1?

Looking forward to your reply.

Best regards,

Anthony.

[Simonr]

Hi Anthony

1. I'm not sure I understand what you mean about this question. Do you want to use the programmer app to identify what application is on the connected device? In that case, you won't be able to, as you will only be able to see what addresses the different regions occupy and what they are called. Other than that, you can't do anything specific with that information.

2. I'm sorry, but we can't go into detail on what the nRFConnect Bluetooth Low Energy firmware, as that is Nordic's IP and not public information.

Best regards,

Simon

[CheMax]

Simonr said:

2. I'm sorry, but we can't go into detail on what the nRFConnect Bluetooth Low Energy firmware, as that is Nordic's IP and not public information.

Well, if without revealing technical details, using example "/ble_connectivity/pca10056/ses_s140_uart", is it possible to get similar functionality?

Also, in one of the branches a hexfile (connectivity_4.1.1_usb_with_s132_3.1.0.hex) was proposed as an alternative file for working with NRF Connect via the built-in usb chip NRF52840. Is this example also private?

Interest arises from the need to get a dongle with support for timeslot API.

[Anthony Ch.]

Hi Simon

Simonr said:

1. I'm not sure I understand what you mean about this question. Do you want to use the programmer app to identify what application is on the connected device?

Yes, you understood correctly. There are about a dozen dongles and different people work with them. In case of an error, you need to be sure that the firmware in the dongle is exactly what we need. Is there a way to compare dongle firmware with the required firmware?

Simonr said:

2. I'm sorry, but we can't go into detail on what the nRFConnect Bluetooth Low Energy firmware, as that is Nordic's IP and not public information.

I see. If this is commercial information, then skip this question. Fortunately, we found an alternative dongle firmware with which the nRF Connect works and understood the reason for the failure.

Best regards,

Anthony.

[Simonr]

Hi

You won't be able to find an application that is able to connect to the nRFConnect Bluetooth Low Energy app.

An application that is able to communicate with the computer should be possible though. The ble_connectivity application is used for serialization applications. For example, if you have a heavy application so that you need to run it on a CPU with a larger processor, but this processor doesn't have a radio, then you can use the ble_connectivity to send commands over a serial interface to the nRF which will act as a slave radio. This infocenter page explains it in detail. The application that nRFConnect uses is based on the connectivity example, but is not exactly the same.

Best regards,

Simon

[Simonr]

Hi Anton

Using the programmer app you can check that the device memory layout and file memory layout are located at the same addresses to confirm that they are the same for example. 

Best regards,

Simon