Add API support for Home Assistant to nRF52

[P1X3L8]

Component name

nRF52

Link to component documentation on our website

https://esphome.io/components/nrf52/

Describe the enhancement

Currently there doesn't seem to be any way to add an nRF52 device to Home Assistant via BLE or Zigbee. Also not sure how OTA is supposed to be usable without having access to a controller like HA.

Use cases

Integrate nRF52 devices in HA for controls, sensor info, and OTA

Anything else?

No response

[github-actions[bot]]

🏷️ I've automatically added the component: nrf52 label to help categorize this feature request.

[tomaszduda23]

You can use zigbee already https://esphome.io/components/zigbee/
OTA is also supported https://esphome.io/components/ota/zephyr_mcumgr/
You can use for instance https://boogie.github.io/mcumgr-web/ to do OTA. It could be integrated at some point with esphome dashboard.

[leobel96]

+1 for the BLE support (apart from the mcumgr OTA, there is no way of using BLE for anything useful)

[tomaszduda23]

you can have uart and logs over ble https://esphome.io/components/ble_nus/

[leobel96]

I was more talking about ble_client and ble_proxy

[wiomoc]

I think it might be valuable if the (OTA) API could be provided not only via a TCP socket, as is currently the case, but also via BLE L2CAP.

For esphome, this would essentially just require implementing an additional socket type (zephyr_ble_l2cap) that maps the BSD-style API to https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/doxygen/html/structbt__l2cap__server.html. If I have time in the near future, I would also write a prototype for this.
Taking this a step further, one could build a similar BLE L2CAP for other BLE-capable platforms too. Both the ESP32 and the BTStack for the RP2040 have a suitable API.

From the client’s perspective (aiohomeapi), this should be fairly easy to implement - not considering peering for now. L2CAP sockets are provided on Linux similarly to TCP / AF_INET sockets https://github.com/bluez/bluez/wiki/L2CAP

[tomaszduda23]

BLE OTA is already supported by mcumgr. It could be integrated with HA using https://github.com/intercreate/smpclient or with esphome dashboard using something like https://boogie.github.io/mcumgr-web

[avg-I]

FWIW, I was able to do BLE OTA with adafruit boot loader as well, but the patched one ("OTAFIX") from here:
https://github.com/oltaco/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader_OTAFIX

I also have a side request in that context.
Would it possible to enhance "dfu" component to have GPREGRET value as a yaml parameter?
It would be really nice if it would be possible to specify not only DFU_MAGIC_UF2_RESET but also DFU_MAGIC_OTA_RESET and DFU_MAGIC_SERIAL_ONLY_RESET as well.

[tomaszduda23]

BLE OTA with Adafruit nRF52 Bootloader was unusable for me. Maybe this fork has some fixes.
When esphome/esphome#16190 is ready mcumgr could be used with Adafruit nRF52 Bootloader. mcuboot would be 2nd stage bootloader. I already tested and update works fine.

Would it possible to enhance "dfu" component to have GPREGRET value as a yaml parameter?
It would be really nice if it would be possible to specify not only DFU_MAGIC_UF2_RESET but also DFU_MAGIC_OTA_RESET and DFU_MAGIC_SERIAL_ONLY_RESET as well.

Feel free to create PR.