Wireless programming Arduino with nrf8001

[Stickables]

We're building a low cost device with an nRF8001 as the only means of communication as physical access is closed after the device is built.

Is there any way to change the nRF8001 output mode to stream data directly to the micro so we can program it wirelessly, for firmware updates? Supporting electronics can be added and the dedicated pins on the micro will be available.

[David Edwin]

You can examine the BTLE optiboot bootloader for the nRF8001 and the ATMega328p and check if it fits your needs. This bootloader currently allows firmware update over UART and over the BTLE.

Let me know if this works for you.

DFU_nRF8001_ble_optiboot_Android_nRFToolbox_1_16_0.pcapng

Edit: Attached a sniffer trace using nRFSniffer (1.0.1.1148) and wireshark version 1.10.9 showing the working DFU

[Stickables]

Thank you very much, I'll look into carefully, but this seems precisely what we need.

[Stickables]

I'm finding it difficult to achieve the basic firmware update using the examples, no success thus far. Bootloader is compiled and flashed, example firmware with DFU is running and the upgrade process just stops after being unable to connect directly to the bootloader (on Android and iOS nRF Toolbox).

[David Edwin]

I will check this out, this is typically a version mismatch between the bootloader DFU protocol version and the Ble-optiboot's DFU protocol version.

[David Edwin]

See my response on github. github.com/.../2

A new nRFToolbox release will fix the issue and the MBR size has to be set to 0 to prevent the nRFToolbox/MCP for Android from truncating the hex/zip file that is sent.