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bq27505 - what happens if a firmware update fails?

Pedroboy
Prodigy 40 points

Hello,

I have tried to update the firmware the bq27505. It has worked well. But now I have a question: what happens if the firmware update is interrupted in the middle and cannot complete (power off/on or another reason during the process)? Is there a manner to re-enter in this "firmware update mode", restart it and have a chip working again?

Because what I understood (and also observed with the evaluation kit) is that there is no possibility to do it. When it crashes, the chip is dead and we have to replace it.

Thus for a production point of view, it is not a problem because we could simply replace the chip by a new one. But what happened if we want to make a firmware update directly at the user's place (bq27505 updated directly on the target via usb connected to PC). We cannot guarantee that he will do things correctly, thus if the firmware update fails, we need a manner to retry it!

I think that is the same problem if we update only the dfi (without the firmware of the bq27505).

I ask this for a simple reason: if we decide to change a battery used with the bq27505 with another one (which could be better/cheaper or other advantage); the golden image will change and consequently a dfi update will be needed on the target. I think this is an important point to discuss.

Thanks for your help.

BR

Julien

  • 0
    TI__Intellectual 2100 points

    Julien,

    There is a data flashing procedure in the application note at: http://www.ti.com/litv/pdf/slua449d (pages 8-11).  The procedure is to record and erase the first two lines of instruction flash, rewrite the data flash, and then rewrite the first two rows of instruction flash. 

    The operations on instruction flash are there to prevent the chip from crashing should there be a power loss during the update.  With this procedure, if there is a power loss during the update, the chip will not try to boot into the firmware and will instead stay in ROM mode when power is restored. 

    Let me know if this helps,

    Charles

  • 0 in reply to Charles Herder
    Prodigy 40 points

    Hello,


    Ok, I will try with the .dfi download to do this (disconnect the device during the update and then try to recover a working version).

    And what about the firmware download itself? (I mean what happens if you disconnect the device during the .sync file is dowloaded in the target?) Do we have also a system of restore?

    Thanks.

    Julien