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Deploying firmware over the air

In Lesson 1, you saw why OTA updates matter. In this topic, you will learn how OTA updates are deployed via nRF Cloud. The grouping you just learned about, cohorts, is how you target a group of devices.

nRF Cloud OTA Engine

When a device checks for an update, it performs a check with nRF Cloud to see whether a newer release is available. In the request, it includes its device ID, hardware version, software type, and current software version. The OTA Engine looks up the device’s cohort, finds the release activated for that cohort, and decides which payload the device should get: a full release, a delta, or if it is already up-to-date. If an update is available, the device receives a link to download the payload. That link points to a global content delivery network (CDN), a network of servers spread around the world that keep copies of your OTA payloads. Each device downloads from the server nearest to it, so downloads are faster and more reliable wherever your fleet is deployed, and a large rollout doesn’t overload a single server.

Release types

A release is a grouping of the artifacts you deploy. nRF Cloud offers two kinds:

A full release can update a device to a specific version from any older version. If the target is 2.0 and any lower version is *, a full release behaves as [* → 2.0].
A delta release updates from exactly one version to exactly one version, [1.0 → 2.0], and is only applied when the device’s current version matches the from-version. Delta releases ship only the difference between two versions, so the payload is much smaller, which saves bandwidth and cost on constrained devices.

Activations

Releases are shared across the project, but you activate them per cohort. This is the practical link to the previous topic: you activate a release for beta first, confirm it is healthy, then activate the same release for production. Activation comes in two forms:

Normal activation makes the release available to every device in the cohort immediately.
Staged rollout makes it available to a random subset of the cohort, sized by a rollout percentage. You raise the percentage as your confidence grows, limiting how many devices could be hit by a bad build. You can also stage specific devices manually.

The version matrix

A cohort’s Version Management tab shows the version matrix: a live view of the very next OTA step each device will take. Rows are the versions devices currently report; columns are the versions they will move to. Each cell holds a clickable count of devices, so you can read, at a glance, how many devices on 1.1 are about to jump to 2.0, how many will take a delta, and how many are staying put. The matrix is also where you create and activate releases for that cohort.

Watching a rollout’s health

After a release is deployed, you can use several parts of nRF Cloud to confirm it is performing as expected. Open a release and use its tabs:

Activation shows payloads and per-cohort activation status, including current device coverage.
Release Health compares Device Vitals (such as expected battery life and stable hours) on the new version against the previous one, so you can see at a glance whether reliability improved or regressed.
Target Devices separates devices that are on the new version from those that are not yet.

For deeper monitoring, pair this with the dashboards and Comparison Mode from Topic 1 to compare the new software version against the old across your own custom metrics. This closes the continuous monitoring loop introduced earlier: target a cohort, roll out gradually, and verify the rebound in the performance data.

More on this

nRF Cloud offers finer controls that this course does not cover, including must-pass-through releases, controlled downgrades, release overrides for a single device, and approval requirements on protected cohorts. See the nRF Cloud OTA documentation for details on advanced OTA features.

Additionally, Lesson 9 of the nRF Connect SDK Intermediate course offers in-depth, hands-on coverage of bootloaders and DFU/FOTA, including using nRF Cloud with different transports.

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