About Off-chip OAD in BLE-Stack v2.1

Hy,

when trying to compile the Sensor Tag OAD example as described above, I see an eclipse warning about an invalid include path:

Does this have any relevance? I can't find the folder "OADExtTester" on my PC, did I miss anything during installation?

Regards

Harald

Hi Bohan,

First, you need to choose which OAD mode you want to follow, the generic, fail-safe model or the legacy ST-specific model. If you decide to go with the legacy model(I suppose you prefer this), I would recommend starting with the 'FlashOnlyOAD' configuration of SensorTag project and not following anything in the CC2640 BLE OAD User's Guide.

Regarding bin images merge, I think it's doable to combine the BIM for ST, the application and the stack altogether into one binary file to flash the device initially. However, the images to be downloaded through OAD shouldn't include BIM.

- Cetri

Hi Bohan,

I'm sorry my explanation about the merged image was wrong. An OAD image CAN include BIM in it, so you are going in one of the right directions. By the way, it should work without BIM as well, but I found that it doesn't work without BIM in case there has been some garbage data in the beginning of the page 31, which is the placeholder for the BIM, of the off-chip flash memory. In that case,  the garbage data will mislead the OAD service into considering as if a new BIM exists and copying it into the on-chip flash. One of the simplest fixes for this would be as follows:

void OAD_imgIdentifyWrite(uint16_t connHandle, uint8_t *pValue)
{

  ...

  if (OADTarget_validateNewImage(pValue+hdr_offset, &ImgHdr, oadBlkTot))
  { 
    imageAddress = OADTarget_imageAddress(pValue+hdr_offset);
    imagePage = imageAddress / HAL_FLASH_PAGE_SIZE;

    // Open the target interface
    OADTarget_open();

#if 1 // Erase the BIM page
    OADTarget_eraseFlash(31);
#endif
    // Store the image header
    OADTarget_storeImageHeader(pValue);

    // Image accepted, request block 0.
    OAD_getNextBlockReq(connHandle, 0);
  }

  ...

}

- Cetri

Hi, Cetri

Thank you for your advice.

I will try the modification you suggested.

Although I could succeed in completing off-chip OAD process by my own way,

would you please help me to confirm that my procedure is correct and acceptable, or if TI has suggested official procedure for this ?

(1) Choose "FlashOnly_SensorTag" for BIM project

(2) Change linker configuration .icf file to "$PROJ_DIR$\..\..\..\..\..\common\cc26xx\IAR\cc26xx_ble_app_oad.icf".

(3) Add configurable file symbol definition "APP_IMAGE_START=0x0000"

(4) Combine BIM, App and Stack hex images to generate final .bin image by using JFlash.

(5) Use Android App downloaded from "git.ti.com/.../sensortag-20-android" with this

   .bin OAD image to upgrate firmware.

Besides, have you had any experience with system getting stuck in following step

void Bim_safeStart(uint32_t start, uint32_t len, uint32_t dstAddr)
{
  // Initialize external flash driver.
  BLS_init();

  // Copy over the image. Note that failure cannot be handled.
  Bim_copyImage(start, len, dstAddr);

  // Close external flash driver.
  BLS_close();

  // Trigger reset.
  HWREG(PRCM_BASE + PRCM_O_WARMRESET) = 4;
  WatchdogResetEnable();
  WatchdogEnable();
  WatchdogReloadSet(0);

  // Enable reset interrupt.
  CPUcpsie();

  // Stay here till reset.
  for (;;);
}

Is there any method to verify this or any clue to find out the root cause ?

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Thank you.

Hi Bohan,

The legacy ST-specific OAD is NOT fail-safe. If OAD is the only way to update the firmware after production, I would recommend using the generic OAD although I know this is too late as your development is almost at the final stage.

I'll take a look at the system reset failure issue when I'm back to work. Sep 7 is a holiday here. Thanks for your understanding.

- Cetri

Hi Bohan,

We are looking into this. In the mean time, can you replace the watchdog reset with the hard-reset-equivalent function as follows?

void Bim_safeStart(uint32_t start, uint32_t len, uint32_t dstAddr)
{
  // Initialize external flash driver.
  BLS_init();

  // Copy over the image. Note that failure cannot be handled.
  Bim_copyImage(start, len, dstAddr);

  // Close external flash driver.
  BLS_close();

#if 0
  // Trigger reset.
  HWREG(PRCM_BASE + PRCM_O_WARMRESET) = 4;
  WatchdogResetEnable();
  WatchdogEnable();
  WatchdogReloadSet(0);

  // Enable reset interrupt.
  CPUcpsie();
#else
  // system reset
  HAL_SYSTEM_RESET();
#endif

  // Stay here till reset.
  for (;;);
}

- Cetri

Hi Bohan,

Good to know it works.

Yes I think you can use the system reset in your application.

- Cetri

Hi YUHUA,

Did you follow the last paragraph of section 9.3.2 step VI? That's one difference between IAR and CCS builds.

- Cetri

Hi YUHUA,

I found an error on the post processing command for CCS project. Sorry about it. The size of the stack generated by CCS is a little bigger than that generated by IAR, so the starting address of the stack should be adjusted accordingly when making an App+Stack combined image.

Please go to Property->Build on the application project and select Steps tab. There is 'Post-build steps' as follows:

"${CG_TOOL_HEX}" -order MS --memwidth=8 --romwidth=8 --intel -o "${ProjName}.hex" "${ProjName}.out"
python "C:/Python27/Scripts/hexmerge.py" -o "${PROJECT_LOC}/FlashOnly_ST_OAD_ExtFlash/OAD_IMAGE_FULL.hex" -r "1000:1CFFF" --overlap=error "${PROJECT_LOC}/FlashOnly_ST_OAD_ExtFlash/${ProjName}.hex":1000:EFFF "${PROJECT_LOC}/../SimpleBLEPeripheralStack/FlashROM/SimpleBLEPeripheralStack.hex":F000:1CFFF

Modify the end address of the application from EFFF to DFFF and the start address of the stack from F000 to E000 as follows:

"${CG_TOOL_HEX}" -order MS --memwidth=8 --romwidth=8 --intel -o "${ProjName}.hex" "${ProjName}.out"
python "C:/Python27/Scripts/hexmerge.py" -o "${PROJECT_LOC}/FlashOnly_ST_OAD_ExtFlash/OAD_IMAGE_FULL.hex" -r "1000:1CFFF" --overlap=error "${PROJECT_LOC}/FlashOnly_ST_OAD_ExtFlash/${ProjName}.hex":1000:DFFF "${PROJECT_LOC}/../SimpleBLEPeripheralStack/FlashROM/SimpleBLEPeripheralStack.hex":E000:1CFFF

Let me know if this works.

- Cetri

Thank you Wei Lu.

- with BLE Device Monitor what Hardware should be used. I have the CCdebugger. I presume some Bluetooth Hw is reqd with it. Please share a link of the hardware to buy

-If the firmware on cc2650stk kit is SensorTag project, is it possible to do an OAD of SBLE over it?

Thanks

Karthik

Sorry correction:Trying to write the same size of the SBLEP hex from 0x0000 instead of 0X1000

Hi Bohan,

Thank you.

Did you try this with the SBP project ?

Thanks

Karthikeyan

Hi, Karthikeyan

I do not port and test this feature on SBP. I use SensorTag as our reference project due to hardware similarity.

But I think it could also work on SBP if BIM and corresponding profiles are integrated.

Thank you Bohan, we were successful in OAD for SensorTag but bricked many tags trying SBP. We tried SBP with APP+Stack+BIM for SBP not the SensorTag BIM.

We are trying to find the right way.

Best Regards

Karthikeyan