I have no experience of it but would think it should be possible to pot the components without affecting or significantly degrading operation.What about just doing an epoxy treatment to your board? Could you then still download firmware update over wi-fi? Would it degrade the antena performance?
That might not stop someone determined. They may be willing to break everything, and any number, provided they can ultimately retrieve an intact Flash chip and get at the secrete sauce.
A potentially more likely issue with potting and allowing upgrades or firmware updates could be what happens if someone performing an update bricks the product ?
If there is a 'back door' which allows un-bricking then someone determined may identify that and, if not, the manufacturer may be lumbered with having to replace bricked product at their own cost.
One could make it non-upgradable but that can be just as problematic should a bug be identified.
More extreme routes to protection may make people more determined to find a way of copying the code it contains.
And, as 'katak255' notes, copying is not the only threat; others may simply develop a clean room alternative which does the same thing.
In my experience there are few cases where anything beyond trivial code protection is actually needed or worthwhile. Perhaps the OP could detail why they think it would be needed in their case ?
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Fri Jun 14, 2024 9:56 am