A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

Mounch — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 06:50:44 GMT

"it will also be added into nRF Connect SDK with Zephyr RTOS later"

I’m very happy to see that it will also be added to the nRF Connect SDK with Zephyr RTOS later. My current project can no longer accommodate new requirements, and I urgently need to use this feature. Could you please let me know when it is planned to be released?

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

strz — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:51:49 GMT

This is great, the Bare Metal support fills a critical need for us. Looking forward to v1.0.0 and S145!

You mentioned that some currently unsupported features are planned for future release. Are there any plans to include NFC support? Based on the nrfxlib integration notes, I assume this would involve a bare metal implementation of the NFC platform module. Curious to hear if that's on the roadmap.

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

daviddedwin — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 09:02:29 GMT

One of the major features that this bare metal SDK brings to the table is a Bluetooth LE stack that is fully controlled by Nordicsemi instead of an open source stack (with very few guarantees on API compatibility) .This also brings a mature Nordicsemi API to the latest silicon which is amazing for productivity.
This bare metal also reduces the number for vendor dependencies as, in the Connect SDK with Zephyr we have to depend on the Zephyr community and Nordicsemi as well, with bare metal we just have one dependency i.e. Nordicsemi. This reduces overall complexity of projects based on the bare metal.
Reduced vendor complexity, reduced code base complexity and mature API. Good start.

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

srini_z — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 14:16:36 GMT

I'm new to the nRF development tools and processes. I've started with this baremetal option for my nRF54L15-DK I acquired recently. This post has been extremely helpful to get me started. I've used the mcuboot_recovery_entry example to DFU the application successfully using the nRF Connect Device Manager app. My question is how to go about doing this from a desktop or command line tool option. Would I be able to use the nRF Connect for Desktop along with the nRF52840 dongle as a pass through to update the application firmware over BLE from the PC? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

Rocky — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 17:06:38 GMT

This is a great new feature. One of the things that was lost in the transition from the nRF5 SDK to the nRF Connect SDK was the ability to do single bank DFU with a BLE recovery mode. Many projects that I work on are cost sensitive and can't support the external memory required for dual bank DFU. They also don't typically have an exposed port for serial recovery mode (via UART or USB).

That said, the bare metal option removes access to Zephyr and middleware options that are great to utilize in a limited fashion. Is there going to be an option to add Zephyr and other features back into the bare metal SDK? Alternatively, could the softdevice concept be added to the nRF Connect SDK so that single bank DFU with BLE recovery mode is possible?

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

rbence — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:47:29 GMT

I think a fair bare metal vs Zephyr comparison would also enable optimization for the bare metal version.

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

Michal — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 09:22:49 GMT

Hi, this looks great ! Any plans to add nrf52 support ?

RE: A technical dive into the nRF Connect SDK Bare Metal option

patjshan — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:34:48 GMT

as a developer with several mature nrf5 projects that could see nrf54 updates in the future this is very exciting news! One clarifying question: Does the current bare-metal version support dual-bank DFU or is DFU not supported at all yet? I see the single-bank is planned for release but it was unclear if dual-bank is supported or will be supported