NRF52 DFU with Beaglebone / Raspberry Pi

[Isabella]

Hi,

In my project, I'll have dozens of devices (using nrf52840) collecting data, and I need to update the devices' application firmware while in the field, but I won`t have any phisical access to the devices. 

We have a central with Beaglebone Blue, so I thought about doing BLE DFU using my beaglebone as the controller, running nrfutil commands. 

Following BLE Secure DFU Bootloader example, it uses a Development Kit attached to the computer. Is there any way we could do the update without the need of another kit (nrf52 and jlink) attached to the linux board?

Has something like this been done before? Can you provide any documentation on this? 

SInce my linux board has bluetooth, I don`t see the need of attaching an extra module to it. 

[Dien Nguyen]

I'm not a support team member, I just accidentally glanced over and saw your question.
You can find the library Android-DFU-Library allowed to run on Android. I think you can convert the code java to run on your Beaglebone kit

[Hung Bui]

Hi Isabella, 

We currently don't have any example or source code on how you can do it on Linux. You may refer to the Android DFU library that Dien pointed to. 
I have created a DFU master code for SPI and UART here that might be useful for you. Other than that you would need to look into the DFU protocol specification and implement your own DFU master code on the Beaglebone board. 

[Isabella]

Thank you for the replies!

I was thinking in a solution using something similar to the update using nrfutil in the example. 

Is it possible to use the same nrfutil commands with a nrf52840-dongle connected to my computer or linux board, instead of DK? Or I'd have to make changes on nrfutil code? 

[Hung Bui]

Hi again Isabella, 
If you are fine having a dongle connected to the beagleboard then it should be fine using nrfutil. The source code of the program is provided on github and you should be able to compile it for Linux.