I’ve been experimenting with the SARA R5 using both LTE and GPS functionality. At unpredictable intervals (about a day or so) the board becomes unresponsive to commands over UART.
The problem is sufficiently rare that debug could be quite slow going…
Has anyone seen a similar problem? Initial attempts to use the reset pin to force the module to reboot haven’t worked (don’t yet know why, but it isn’t reconnecting in the way it does after a power cycle).
Well, there is very little code. So far, I’m just sending gps coordinates to an MQTT broker and not storing anything locally. Obviously, there could be a problem in my code, but it’s hard to find with a rare, intermittent problem.
So far, the work around is to detect the failure, then use the micro to power-cycle the SARA. Ugly…
I’m still struggling with the SARA R5. I’m (sort of) OK with a power cycle to rescue a lost connection, but, unfortunately I’m having some difficulties with the board not always reconnecting after a 30 second power down. (Hologram SIM)
I’m not very familiar with the connection sequence that cellular IOT devices go through, so I’m wondering if I am missing some obvious “gotcha’s”. At this time, I’m simply following sparkfun example code to get the connection going.
Are there any obvious traps that a cellular IOT beginner might be missing?
I’m seriously thinking about getting another SARA R5 board to see if it behaves the same way…
My setup is sparkfun SARA-R510M8S Gnss + LTE micromod function, a sparkfun ESP32 processor, Hologram sim, LTE wide band flec antenna 600mhz-6000mhz
My issue is that when using the example code #2 I never get a blue light as mentioned in sparkfuns guide, I can press any key and I get the following
All X’s are populated, just renamed for security reasons.
SARA-R5 connected!
Manufacturer ID: u-blox
Model ID: SARA-R510M8S
Firmware Version: 03.30
Product Serial No.: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
IMEI: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
IMSI: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
SIM CCID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Subscriber No.:
Capabilities: +CGSM
SIM state reports requested…
That’s all I get.
More so If I try and use the M-Center to try and connect I get the following (Not responding) and the only time I do get any information is just after I connect the USB and connect only for the first connect will it give me any information. The firmware appears to be the latest so IDK what to think, It can’t be the code as its official example code.
I even tried to update without any lock in it finding the target. The first example works I can get GPS fix and see XYZ but now I’m moving on to getting it working with LTE aspect, I do have the expected type of network its looking for LTE-M
It looks like you have been successful in compiling and uploading the library example to the ESP32 processor. That’s good. But you are then trying to use m-center to communicate with the ESP32. That’s not going to work. m-center is expecting to communicate directly with the SARA-R5.
If you do want to use m-center, you need a direct connection to the SARA-R5. It would be possible to do this through the ESP32, but you would need to upload new code which simply forwards the ESP32 Serial port to the SARA-R5 UART, and vice versa, and does nothing else. A “pass-through”. It might also be possible to to use the MicroMod Update Tool to do the same thing. That’s how we recommend doing it on the MicroMod Asset Tracker. But I’ve never tried using the Update Tool with the LTE Function Board. And I don’t have an LTE Function Board here to test…
Regarding the NI LED not lighting up. My suggestion would be to try Example3, and view the output through the IDE Serial Monitor (not m-center). Please post the output here and we will try and figure out what is going on.
Have you registered and activated your Hologram SIM?
You confirmed my suspicion regarding connecting directly to SARA R5, and thank you for reassuring that I have a functioning unit, last night I was able to receive a text message via the serial monitor from Arduino IDE using the example. I tried using an Rs232 to USB adapter from the uart pins that are supposed to communicate directly with the function board but I had no luck doing that, which was leading me to believe there was something wrong, I also soldered the bridge on the right protection in case that was preventing the new firmware from riding as I did try flashing the firmware again without any luck, but that’s okay. It’s not needed at this point because it’s working and it is already on the latest. It’s just my connections I always try to use weren’t right. But that about sums it up for now.
