ZB stack update

[abe]

Hello, I developed for my customer, a ZigBee coordinator in last 2019, using nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee v3.2.0.
I have now two questions:
- is ZigBee 3.0 supported by this stack?
- how can I easily update my custom FW to use last versione of nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee?
I would't make it using a coordinator example on new SDK and then integrating my custom FW inside this sample. The actual custom FW is a result of many integration between stack, drivers and many custom functions, we will like to have a quickly solution to reduce issue risk and time to testing and debbugging the new integration.
The way we would prefer is to update ONLY the Zboss stack, making only the minimum needed changes or adjust

Many thanks for your help
Abele

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi Abele,

Yes, nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee v3.2.0 supports Zigbee v3.0, see release notes.

- how can I easily update my custom FW to use last versione of nRF5 SDK for Thread and Zigbee?

No easy answer for this. You can start by taking a look at the release notes for nRF SDK for T&Z v3.2.0, v4.0.0 and v.4.1.0 and make a list of the updates. Software components fromm  v4.3.2  have been inherited from nRF5 SDK v15.3.0, while v4.1.0 is based on nRF5 SDK v16.0.0, so taking a look at the Migration guide for nRF5 SDK may also be useful: https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/topic/sdk_nrf5_v16.0.0/migration.html 

That said I also want to let you know that all future development on Zigbee is taking place in the new nRF Connect SDK: https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/ug_zigbee.html

So even if we plan to support nRF5 SDK for T&Z for a long time in the future, there will not be any future development here.

Best regards,

Marjeris

[abe]

Hi Marjeris,

thanks for your answers.
Yes, I have seen the migration guide but it seems very wasteful; in addition there are no indication for T&Z migration.
My custom application has mixed BLE and ZigBee, as a result of almost 1 year of developement.

 

abe said:

The way we would prefer is to update ONLY the Zboss stack, making only the minimum needed changes or adjust

What about my note here above?
I think that could be a bit more simple, and can have less impact on the current custom code.
For last, thanks for the suggest of future ZigBee development ...but nRF5 SDK for T&Z that I used is less than 2 year old, I hope that Nordic ensure the needed maintenance for many years ...

BR

Abele

[Marjeris Romero]

You could try to update only the Zboss stack changing the libzboss.a files from ZBOSS v3.0.0 to v3.3.0, but I doubt it would work out of the box, as there were quite some changes in the nRF5 SDK (which the Z&T SDK is based from) to add the new features, from v3.2.0 to v.4.1.0, which are as listed in the release notes:

- Added support for Zigbee PRO R22 specification.
- Added support for nRF52833, with examples.
- Added implementation of the default signal handler.

If these new features are not something required by your application perhaps you should consider if updating the SDK will be worth the hassle or not.

[abe]

Then, if I well understand, if is needed to update the T&Z stack to fix some bug on a certain stack release, user must start a new project with new SDK and integrate again all the custom development?
This is very niggling, specially for very important development that required many time for debug and functions stability.
I ask Nordic to help me to find better solution and give me some more precise indications about how to best solve my issue. Thanks in advance
Abele