OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

cl — Tue, 31 May 2016 01:45:49 GMT

Hi Vidar. It's working nicely after I changed the ic to QFAAB0. Thanks!

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

Vidar Berg — Fri, 27 May 2016 12:46:13 GMT

I was unable to reproduce this with iphone 5s, toolbox 3.0.1, ios 9.3.2. However, I just noticed you are working with the eng. B and think the problem you have is likely related to errata # 73, please refer to this thread for more details on compatibility.

Note that there are not example .zip files for SDK 11.0.0 in the toolbox app yet, only for the alpha version, and those will fail the pre-validate check. Instead you should use those found here: \nRF5_SDK_11.0.0\examples\dfu\ble_dfu_send_hex\test_images_update_nrf52

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

cl — Fri, 27 May 2016 01:39:47 GMT

I forgot to mention the error message. It was "The connection has timed out unexpectedly. (code : 6)".

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

cl — Thu, 26 May 2016 10:20:29 GMT

It's 12. I didn't change the value of it. Do I have try with different values?

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

Vidar Berg — Thu, 26 May 2016 10:15:06 GMT

What is the packet receipt notification set to in ios settings -> nrf toolbox? The default is 12.

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

cl — Thu, 26 May 2016 09:06:02 GMT

I have a similar issue with nrf52 dk board(pca10040. nRF52832-QFAABA). With original dual bank ble bootloader in the SDK 11.0, I tried to upload using nRF Toolbox(ver 3.0.1). I used many .zip files to test but .zip file with only application without softdevice & bootloader had succeed. Every .zip files including softdevice & bootloader failed. (Even the .zip file in the nRF Toolbox for default.) I used iPhone5S(iOS9.3.2) and I tried using original bootloader and buffer size customized one like above. What points should I check for this problem?

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

AndreaO — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 07:57:04 GMT

Thanks a lot Vidar, I just found a nasty makefile include path error (syntax error on a path, obviously no error message from make...). Anyway, errors lead to better knowledge :-)

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

Vidar Berg — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 14:02:07 GMT

We have still not been able to reproduce the instability reported in this thread. Please let me know if anyone are still experiencing this with the default buffer size.

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

Vidar Berg — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:58:55 GMT

@AndreO, the buffer sizes appear to be from the serial version of the bootlaoder. The default values when you open the BLE bootloader should be the following.

#define RX_BUF_SIZE       32u   /**< RX buffer size in bytes. */

#define RX_BUF_QUEUE_SIZE 8u    /**< RX buffer element size. */

Please ensure that you have added the correct header in your project. The include path should point to \config\dfu_xxx_bank_blesxxx_pca100xx and not \config\dfu_xxx_bankserial_sxxx_pca100xx. This can happen if you change the target device in the projects options as that resets the project specific settings.

600 bytes buffer is a bit overkill since the the BLE packets are just 20 bytes, but the queue size needs to be at least 8 bytes.

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

AndreaO — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:43:35 GMT

Thanks a lot for this post! We just experienced the same issue with board PCA10040 and nRF Toolbox on iOS. We tried our custom C# PC software. In SDK11.0.0 for nRF52 the default values are way off:

#define RX_BUF_SIZE       600u   /**< RX buffer size in bytes. */
#define RX_BUF_QUEUE_SIZE 4u    /**< RX buffer element size. */

We hope the hci_mem_pool is used only for BLE buffering, and we change to 8 buffers of 20B. This solved the bootloader problem. We didn't change yet the pstorage queue size.

Actually, we noticed the board PCA10040 functioned when just arrived... could be the slightly deteriorated flash, with longer write times?

Thanks again.

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

Vidar Berg — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 12:38:00 GMT

Thanks for reporting this, will raise this issue internally. Although, I was not able to reproduce it at my end even after several attempts. The application I uploaded was 124K. Did you do any other modifcations to the bootlaoder that could result in some additional overhead? Have you tried uploading the same using nRFtoolbox on an Android/iOS device? In that case, do you experience the same issue?

I think the reason for this problem is that the flash operations is unable to keep up with the incoming data, hence fill up the buffers and queue. What happens when you increase the number packets between notifications is that you increase the data throughput as one connection interval is "wasted" on sending the notification packet.

RE: OTA DFU times out and is unreliable

GlennEngel — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 17:56:42 GMT

This totally solved my problem! I was unable to update from MCP without errors until I made these changes to my bootloader source. Thanks for taking the time to document and post this. Hopefully Nordic will make the changes you mention.

I found I needed to use RX_BUF_SIZE of 64u to reliably update.