BlueBeacon Bluetooth Low Energy proximity beacon OTA firmware upgrade Over the air (OTA) firmware upgrade can be performed on BlueBeacon beacons (all models excluding USB) using most recent ios devices. The example in this tutorial has been done using an ipad Mini running ios 7.1.2. The screenshots may vary slightly if you are using another version of Apple's mobile operating system or another device. Note: It is strongly suggested to implement the procedure one beacon at a time. 1. Install nrf Toolbox The first step to enable DFU (Device Firmware Update) support on your ios device is to install an application named nrf Toolbox from Nordic Semiconductor. 1/16
2. Adding Custom Firmware Before you can transfer our custom firmware to the BlueBeacon beacon, you need to copy the.zip (or the.hex) file over to ipad, which requires to connect the ipad to your computer and load up itunes. With the ipad connected to your computer and itunes open, click the ipad icon in the top-righthand corner: Once the ipad has been selected, select the Apps tab at the top and scroll down a bit. You should see a section called File Sharing, as below. Select the nrf Toolbox icon on the left-hand side, and then click the "Add..." button which will give you a file selection dialogue box, as shown below. 2/16
Select the appropriate.zip (or.hex) file that contains your firmware (note: in the specific example shown in the following figures the name of the file is blemodule_s110_xxaa.hex, but the procedure is the same). The name of the files are shown in the following table. Firmware version File name ibeacon bluebeacon-v4.0.zip Eddystone eddystone-v4.0.zip Note: *.zip files do not need to be unzip. Then, click the 'Add' button, and the file should be added to the nrf Toolbox Documents list, and shown below. Now sync the ipad with your computer using the Sync button in the bottom right-hand corner of itunes, and the.zip (or.hex) file should be transferred to the nrf Toolbox app on your ios device. 3/16
3. Using DFU in nrf Toolbox Once you've installed the nrf Toolbox application and have it open you should see the following main menu. 4/16
Tap the DFU icon to load the DFU app, which is what you will be using to transfer new firmware to the BlueBeacon beacon over the air. 5/16
4. Transferring the Firmware via BLE Having the custom firmware image(s) on your ios device, you can transfer one of them over the air. Into the nrf Toolbox application, open the DFU home page and click the Select File label shown in the image below. 6/16
This will bring up the following file selection dialogue box by default, listing some pre-installed firmware images from Nordic Semiconductors: 7/16
Click the User Files icon in the image above, which should show us any custom firmware files have transferred via itunes, as decribed earlier in this page. Note: The filename used here may be different than the production firmware images or future updates provided by BlueUp. 8/16
Select the appropriate firmware image by clicking on it, which will bring you back to the DFU homepage with some basic information about the.zip (or.hex) file will be displayed. 9/16
Take note of the field that says 'Type: Required'. This means that you haven't specified what type of code is encoded in the.zip (or.hex) file (user code, an update to the SoftDevice or an update to the DFU bootloader, all of which can be updated over the air). Next click the Select File Type label, and indicate that this is application code, as shown below. Note: be very careful to only select APPLICATION in this dialogue or you can corrupt the BlueBeacon flash memory contents! This will send you back to the DFU home page where the Type field will have been updated to application, and you are almost ready to transfer our firmware image. 10/16
5. Put the BlueBeacon in DFU Mode Next you need to put the BlueBeacon beacon in DFU mode. Note: make sure the beacon battery is not running low (less than 15%), otherwise replace it with a new battery. To put the BlueBeacon beacon in DFU mode, you need to: 1. (only if password access is enable, otherwise go to step 2) Using BlueBeacon Tool app, from BlueUp, connect to the BlueBeacon beacon, inserting the required password. In the Device Security page, disable password and disconnect. Note: consider that, if you will enable the password again, the password will restart from default value, 00000000. 2. Connect to the BlueBeacon beacon with a standard BLE app (you can use LightBlue app) 3. Select the characteristic with UUID 83362019-4D55-445B-B374-D53DB987EAD8 contained in the service with UUID 83361900-4D55-445B-B374-D53DB987EAD8 11/16
4. Write the hex value 1 (0x01) in the characteristic. 5. Disconnect from the BlueBeacon beacon. The beacon remains in DFU mode for 1 minute, after that it restarts with the loaded firmware). 12/16
6. Connecting to the DFU Service With the BlueBeacon beacon in DFU mode, you can now connect to it. Click the Select Device button at the bottom of the DFU application on the ipad, which should bring up the following dialogue box. The name may be different from the one in the screenshot, where the name is DfuTarg. The BlueBeacon beacon in DFU mode will advertise itself as DfuTarg or BlueUp-YY-XXXXXX (where YY is the model and XXXXXX the serial number). Select this target by clicking on the entry in the list. Note: because of the way ios caches beacon data, the beacon may be advertised as UART or whatever custom name you set up. If that is the case you need to clear the cache by enabling and then disabling Bluetooth on your ios device. This is unfortunately something outside the application level, and you can't reset Bluetooth inside an app yorrselves. 13/16
This should enable the Upload label, as shown below. 14/16
Click the Upload label to start transferring the file over the air, and you will be updated on the file progress via a simple progress bar. Note: If you encounter any problems with DfuTarg disconnecting or the Upload label not being enabled, trying enabling and then disabling Bluetooth on your device, which will reset the Bluetooth stack. 15/16
Once the upload process is complete, you should see the following dialogue box, saying that the transfer is finished, and you can reset your beacon (power-cycling it by removing and inserting again the battery) to start executing the new firmware. Note: the file size shown in this dialogue is the actually size of the firmware, whereas the.hex (or.zip) file size may be much larger due to the file encoding and extra information contained. Congrats: firmware is now updated! Note: because of the way ios caches beacon data, ios app will show you inconsistent information (wrong beacon name, parameters, services and/or chars). You need to clear the cache by enabling and then disabling Bluetooth on your ios device. 16/16