BCM20732S using the SPIFFY2 as the communications interface to an external Microcontroller in slave mode

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello

I have a customer that would like to use the BCM20732S as a slave BLE module with a much larger external processor handling other tasks as part of a larger system design. In this case the BCM20732S is one of many slave peripherals in the system. Due to a lack of serial communications ports on the main processor they would like to use SPI as the main communications path to send and receive BLE data, with the BCM20732S handling the Profile & data packet connectivity.

Its not clear from the documentation whether the SPIFFY2 is bootable into this mode without the module having been pre-programmed with firmware written by the customer, so please can you elaborate?

They would prefer that the 'customer specific' firmware is loaded when the module is ordered, since the design wouldn't allow for any access to the UART via their host processor (not enough spare UARTs). On-board programming during production would simply take too long to manufacture high volumes (if the only other method was to programme the module from a PCB header using the UART or JTAG to make the SPI port the default communications port on Power-Up).

Regards

Robert

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1 Solution
asridharan
Employee
Employee
10 comments on KBA 5 comments on KBA First comment on KBA

The BCM20732S module has an EEPROM built into it. The application code needs to be programmed into this in the factory (using the HCI/factory UART pins). The app should configure the SPIFFY2 interface as a slave and this is what you need to use to interface with the external microprocessor.

> Its not clear from the documentation whether the SPIFFY2 is bootable into this mode without the module having been pre-programmed with firmware written by the customer, so please can you elaborate?

The SoC always boots off the EEPROM built into the BCM20732S module.

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asridharan
Employee
Employee
10 comments on KBA 5 comments on KBA First comment on KBA

The BCM20732S module has an EEPROM built into it. The application code needs to be programmed into this in the factory (using the HCI/factory UART pins). The app should configure the SPIFFY2 interface as a slave and this is what you need to use to interface with the external microprocessor.

> Its not clear from the documentation whether the SPIFFY2 is bootable into this mode without the module having been pre-programmed with firmware written by the customer, so please can you elaborate?

The SoC always boots off the EEPROM built into the BCM20732S module.

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