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Using nRFgo Studio when producing 18000 units

I need to do the following when assembling a device with nrf-52 at the factory.

  • Add firmware onto device
  • Add a unique serial number for the device
  • Print a sticker and add on the outside of the device box with same serial number
  • Test some basic bluetooth functionality

Would it be a good idea to nRFgo Studio for these tasks?

An alternative would be to make our own android application with a barcode scanner. A worker could then flash firmware onto the device -> scan sticker barcode with the android app -> connect to the device -> register serial number onto the device and test bluetooth functionality. But it sounds time consuming.

Any help on this would be very appreciated. How is this usually handled?

  • If you want to train your patience, it is good idea to use nRFgo Studio - it will take forever to click erase and flashing for all that units... For lower amount of chips, I would try some nrfjprog scripting, but for 18k units you need some better production programming solution.

    Some info available here.

  • Thank you. I wonder if using a production tool like SEGGER J-LINK OB and Nordic's nrfjprog.exe combined if I can also test bluetooth functionality and make it print stickers. Do you know how flexible would it be? Flashing firmware and serial numbers to the device seems easy.

  • Eerm, I don't think segger software/nrfjprog has stickers printing capability... However you always can write script ex. in python that would flash, read (using nrfjprog) device MAC (or whatever, fro memory) and somehow call printer, assuming you got some printer that can be controlled like that. For testing bluetooth functionality - j-link is just a debugger, not the bluetooth testing device? There should be some solutions for that available here on the forum though.

    You can also create your own using nrf's or some pc in-built bluetooth 4.x (and app written using ex. noble, gattlib or with nordic serialization driver...)

    Also, I am not sure if license of J-Link OB allows to use it production programming, but assuming you are producing 18k units, you probably just could buy some "normal" j-link.

  • Thanks, that helps! So what Im thinking now is the following

    1. Use nrfjprog python wrapper that Nordic provides to write the firmware to NRF52 available here: github.com/.../pynrfjprog
    2. Read serial number from file and flash it to the customer registers in the UICR with nrfjprog as well as seen here: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../
    3. Bluetooth functionality could be tested in the same script with: bitbucket.org/.../pygattlib
    4. And finally after the device is tested a label could be printed with this: github.com/.../brother_ql

    This could all happen in the same python script. Would this work well you think?

  • I have not used those solutions myself, so i could not confirm 100%, but that approach seems to be reasonable. Still, doing it for 18k units is really a challenge. If I were you, i would contact some production-programming solutions providers (like those suggested in the link before) and ask if they got any better idea.

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