RE: DFU over BLE from application using buttonless, background or not possible?

ovrebekk — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 13:20:00 GMT

If I understand you correctly you want to run a DFU update in the background while still running the application?

My colleague Vidar discussed this in an earlier thread.

This is technically possible, but it has many drawbacks compared to doing DFU the normal way:

1) The DFU update will be much slower, since it has to be run while the application is active

2) You will only be able to update the application, not the SoftDevice or bootloader

3) It will limit how large the application can be, since you have to reserve dual banks for the application. On a device like the nRF52840 this might be OK, but on the nRF52832 you have much less flash available.

4) It will be much more complex to implement and test, since there is always a risk that running DFU and application side by side could lead to reliability issues.

I would strongly consider just doing DFU the normal way instead. Normally DFU is not something that needs to be run very often, and we have worked to optimized the speed of DFU in recent updates to ensure the user won't have to wait too long for the DFU to complete.

Best regards
Torbjørn