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RNode Flasher

A work-in-progress web based firmware flasher for Reticulum / RNode_Firmware.

  • It is written in javascript and uses the Web Serial APIs.
  • It supports putting relevant devices into DFU mode.
  • It supports flashing firmware from a zip file.

At this time, it does not support flashing bootloaders or softdevices for the nRF boards.

How does it work?

I wanted something simple, for flashing RNode firmware to a nRF52 RAK4631 in a web browser.

So, I spent a bit of time working through the source code of adafruit-nrfutil and wrote a javascript implementation of dfu_transport_serial.py

Generally, you would use the following command to flash a firmware.zip to your device;

adafruit-nrfutil dfu serial --package firmware.zip -p /dev/cu.usbmodem14401 -b 115200 -t 1200

The nrf52_dfu_flasher.js in this project implements a javascript, web based version of the above command.

There was an existing package called pc-nrf-dfu-js, however this repo had been archived and didn't appear to support the latest DFU protocol.

How to use it?

  • Open https://liamcottle.github.io/rnode-flasher/ in your web browser.
  • Select your device.
  • Put your device into DFU mode (for nRF52 boards)
  • Select a firmware file and click flash.
  • Once flashed, your device should reboot into the new firmware.
  • For new devices that have never been provisioned, you should click "Provision" to configure the EEPROM.
  • Every time you flash new firmware, you should also click "Set Firmware Hash".

Note: At this time, firmware hashes for RNode are not automatically configured.

What is needed to set up a new RNode?

Note: This is a technical overview of how the RNode device provisioning works. Most of this is taken care of by the code base, and this section just makes it easier to understand what is going on.

To set up a new RNode device, you will need to do a few things;

  • Obtain supported hardware, such as a RAK4631
  • Obtain an RNode firmware file
  • Put your device into DFU mode
  • Flash the firmware file
  • Provision the EEPROM

Once the firmware is flashed to the device, you will need to provision the EEPROM;

  • Set firmware hash in eeprom
  • Collect device info
    • product
    • model
    • hardware_revision
    • serial_number
    • made (unix timestamp of device creation)
  • Write device info to eeprom
  • Create an MD5 checksum of the device info
  • Write 16 byte device info checksum to eeprom
  • Sign device info checksum with signing key to use as signature
  • Write 128 byte signature to eeprom
  • Write ROM.INFO_LOCK_BYTE to ROM.ADDR_INFO_LOCK in eeprom
  • Read eeprom and validate checksums and signatures to ensure all is correct

TODO

  • support configuring eeprom with device signatures and firmware hashes
  • support flashing existing firmware files from api
  • calculate on air bitrate based on tnc settings
  • try using web-serial-polyfill to support flashing from Android device?

License

MIT

References