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nRF Util for Raspberry Pi

rpi-nrfutil Actions Status

Overview

This repository contains a set of scripts presenting how to build nRF Util executable for Raspberry Pi (armv7l architecture).

Project uses QEMU based emulated environment for the Raspberry Pi, and can be run on Linux system (tested on Ubuntu 18.04).

The resulted nrfutil was verified for:

  • generating firmware packages
  • flashing nRF52840 Dongle (PCA10059) using serial DFU over USB
  • triggering bootloader mode using USB DFU trigger library

This is experimental project and other functionalities were not tested.

Installing nRF Util from Raspberry Pi

The easiest way to fetch nrfutil is to download it from GitHub release assets or from the GitHub actions

For example:

wget https://github.com/LuDuda/rpi-nrfutil/releases/download/v6.1.0/nrfutil
chmod +x nrfutil
nrfutil --help

Building nRF Util on Linux

Run the following commands to prepare the build environment and start the building process.

./script/bootstrap
./script/build

After a successful build, the nrfutil executable can be found in the output folder.

nRF Util version

This project supports nrfutil in version 6.1.0. To change it's version, adjust the content of script/_nrfutil script.

Building nRF Util on Raspberry Pi

Alternatively, you can also install/build the nrfutil directly on your Raspberry Pi by following the script/_nrfutil script.

For older versions of Rasbian such as Stretch, you would need also to build Python3.7 from sources with development support.

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev libffi-dev -y
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.4/Python-3.7.4.tar.xz
tar xf Python-3.7.4.tar.xz
cd Python-3.7.4
./configure --enable-shared
make
sudo make altinstall

Flashing nRF52840 Dongle from Raspberry Pi

The nRF52840 Dongle (PCA10059) incorporates Nordic’s bootloader from Nordic’s nRF5 SDK. nrfutil supports generating and flashing firmware packages over USB.

To update the firmware, perform the following steps:

  1. Enter the Bootloader mode on the board.

    To do that, either push the reset button on the board or make use of DFU USB software trigger. The second option requires additional support in the existing application firmware.

  2. Generate firmware package.

    nrfutil pkg generate --hw-version 52 --sd-req=0x00 \
  --application app.hex --application-version 1 app.zip

  3. Flash new firmware.

    nrfutil dfu usb-serial -pkg app.zip -p /dev/ttyACM0