DFU in field deployments

[haricane]

I am getting ready to release a nrf52 based ble product. These products are connected to a BLE to wifi bridge. So I can talk to them at any time. 

I have been using the secure DFU examples very successfully to push firmware from my phone to each device, and it works great (during dev and test phase). 

After sales/ deployment , I want a way to update firmware on these devices without any user intervention. 

Are there any examples to support this usecase? I have read something about SMP here on the forum. Not sure if it applies.

Is there any solution (Nordic or 3rd party you can recommend)  to deploy new firmware to large number of device eg 1000s from a centralized location ( say a web admin console or so?)

** edit: after some poking around I found out about IoT sdk. Why have the IoT sdk examples been removed while moving from SDK ver 16 to 17? Is it no longer supported?**

Thanks, 

Hari 

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi Hari,

I assume you are using the nRF5 SDK?

After sales/ deployment , I want a way to update firmware on these devices without any user intervention. 

Can you explain a bit more about how you want to do this? Even though no user, something has to initiate and be responsible for the update. And a mechanism must be used. What is your BLE-WiFi bridge like? Could you implement a BLE DFU master there? If so, you could perhaps use the same DFU solution that you have successfully used in the past, but replace the phone with another DFU master (your bridge).

I have read something about SMP here on the forum

That is probably in the context of the nRF Connect SDK, which had a entirely different DFU approach. There the transport happens in the application, and it used the Simple Management Protocol (SMP) and MCUMgr protocol.

after some poking around I found out about IoT sdk. Why have the IoT sdk examples been removed while moving from SDK ver 16 to 17? Is it no longer supported?**

Regarding the IoT SDK DFU solution this was always experimental, and the IoT SDK components were removed from SDK 16 as you like. It was not much used and never made it out of experimental before it was removed. That said, you can take inspiration from there and make a DFU solution where the transport happens in the application, and the bootloader only do activation if that is what you want. 

Einar

[haricane]

Hello Einar, 

Thanks for your responses. 

Yes, I am using NRF5 v17 sdk. 

I would like to have a web application console, which I will manage. I want to upload a hex file and have that file distributed to 1000+ devices in the field. So yes, I will initiate the DFU, from my web dashboard. 

My wifi to BLE bridge is a simple device. It has NRF52 connected up to a wifi module via UART. NRF52 is the master. I like the idea of implementing a DFU master on this bridge. Is there any resources on porting the android application for DFU into an NRF52 MCU environment? Is the code for nrf connect android app open source?

Regards, 

Hari 

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi Hari,

I see. We do not have any DFU master implementation for nRF devices, unfortunately. So if you choose that solution you will need to implement it yourself. You can refer to other implementations as reference though, for instance the Android DFU library which is available on GitHub: https://github.com/NordicSemiconductor/Android-DFU-Library.

[haricane]

thanks for clarifying Einar!