Is it possible to conduct an Over-The-Air Device-Firmware-Update (OTA DFU) of a peripheral BLE device using the nRF52 DK as the central device?

[tjhasan]

Given a 3rd party BLE device (for example a fitness) watch, would it be possible to connect to it using the nRF52 DK and conduct a DFU on it? If so, is there any documentation by Nordic that I can reference?

I've already read this document that talks about adding the DFU to an application, but I'm looking for how to conduct an OTA DFU on a 3rd party device to which I do not have access to the source code.

Ideally, I would like to do this in the following steps:

1. nRF52 DK connects to 3rd party BLE device
2. nRF52 DK initiates OTA DFU with 3rd party BLE device
3. nRF52 DK gracefully disconnects from 3rd party BLE device after completing the update.

Please let me know if this is something feasible, or if there is another way to go about this.

[Vidar Berg]

Hello,

The nR52 can be programmed to operate as a central, connect to a given device, and start sending data to it. But whether it will be possible to do DFU will depend on how it's implemented on this 3rd party device.

Do you have any additional information about the DFU implementation? E.g. if it uses an open or a proprietary transfer protocol, if it has any security mechanisms such as Signature verification that will prevent others from uploading FW on it, etc..

Details about the DFU protocol we use can be found here: DFU protocol