Adding ble dfu for nrf52840 dongle

[Desmond G]

Hi, I am currently working on implement ble dfu on the nrf52840 dongle. I tried following this https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/guides/nrf-connect-sdk-guides/b/software/posts/ncs-dfu and it works on the nrf52dk. However, it didnt work on the dongle. The only difference in changes i have made between nrf52dk and the dongle is that i use mcumgr to flash the dongle and west flash for the dk. I tried smp_server example and used the usb cdc overlay. Whenever i tried to use the mcumgr echo command, nothing responded but i could still upload the bin file. Did i somehow set it wrongly? 

I am currently developing on NCS v1.5.1.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

The nRF52840 Dongle ships with a nRF5 SDK based USB bootloader, and that complicates things quite a bit, and the guide about DFU in nRF Connect SDK does not cover it. Why do you want Bluetooth DFU on a USB dongle in the first place? If you are using it as a development kit and want to develop Bluetooth DFU for use on a custom board in the future then I suggest using a DK instead, as that way what you do are transferable to what you would use in a custom board (which does not have the USB bootloader).

[olofjohnsson]

Hi! I have the same need adding BLE DFU to the PCA10059. I am using NCS v2.6.0. The reason is that the footprint of the board fits my project perfectly

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

It is possible to add MCUboot to the nRF52840 dongle, that is discribed in the Zephyr documentation for the dongle (for serial recovery in this case, but the fundamentals are the same). And if you porgram the dongle with an external debugger, you can remove the existing nRF5 SDK bootloader (remember to set REGOUT0 in you new firmware in that case, see the last part of the old dongle programming tutorial).