Swarm M138 crashes

SPARK-X
1

I’m making progress with my M138 - I received 3 signal strength (receive test) messages today. However, after 2 of them, the modem crashed and rebooted. Screenshots attached.

My code wasn’t doing anything interesting at the time (just parsing messages), so I don’t think the issue is anything on my side. Anyone have any ideas?

Maybe I need a firmware upgrade, but I can’t find anything on that topic.

Thank you.

p.s. Yes, I’ve had the modem over a month and this is only the second time I’ve received anything from a satellite, but there are a bunch of subtleties I’ve been learning along the way. So I’m getting past the self-induced issues

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2

Hi Paul,

A couple of questions:

How are you powering your modem? I remember you had a damaged USB connector. Are you still using that same board? Just wondering if the power is browning or blacking out when the modem transmits.

What software are you using? Is it something you’ve written yourself? Is it on GitHub- so we can take a quick look?

Best wishes,

Paul

3

At this time I’m using a Bus Pirate to power the device and communicate to it. I’ve tried both 3.3 and 5 volts.

I am doing my own code in C# on Windows. It works well until the above issue.

I’m thinking I should get on GitHub, if only for the fun of it, but I’m not there yet.

I’ve also started using an Arduino but haven’t gotten deeply into that (but that’s an easy approach).

Thanks.

4

Hi Paul,

Please check the bus pirate can provide adequate current:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/sp … rrent-draw

That could explain your reboots - if the modem has messages in the queue and attempts to transmit as the satellite passes overhead.

Best wishes,

Paul

5

Hi Paul,

I just wanted to let you know that I’ve now seen the same crashes as you. I asked Swarm about them and they could be due to database corruption - probably because I turned the modem off while it was doing some database juggling… Please see:

viewtopic.php?p=239481#p239481

You might find the full discussion useful:

viewtopic.php?f=123&t=59131

My modem hasn’t rebooted since I did the full RS deletedb + PO + power cycle.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Paul