I’m guessing you mean can you update the emonPi/SD without automatically updating the emonpi add-on board firmware. Yes you can, use the “Update emonBase” not the “Update emonPi” button, bit of a backdoor approach but that way it fails to upload new firmware because it tries to use the wrong upload baud.
See Update EmonPi Button or Update EmonBase Button? for a fuller explanation.
[EDIT} Unless…
The only time a “automatic update” occurs is at first boot of a new emonSD image. There is no easy way to stop that from updating as an emonPi since the distinction between an emonPi and emonBase came along later so yes at the very first boot of a fresh emonSD image it will automatically overwrite your FW. There are 3 ways to avoid this, none are ideal.
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Remove your emonpi board from the RPi until that first boot update has happened, then after that you can reattach and there will be 2 update buttons (as described above) so you can use the emonBase button going forward.
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Do the initial “first boot” on another Pi then move the emonSD card to the emonPi.
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Edit the image on another machine and create a blank emonpiupdate.log file in the data directory, this is the flag that starts the “first boot” update, but that will not help you much as that first update needs to happen for you to get the second update button, unless you manually update emoncms (git pull and login to update db) , then click “update emonBase” from within emoncms to get the full update.