Thingy:91 stopped being responsive during activation

[Ivan Popov]

Hello,

The other day we received or batch of devices and started getting to know them. 

For the Thingy:91 I followed the instructions in the video guide provided here.

One advice about this guide - it's good to be mentioned that the MicroUSB cable must be of the type that can transfer data because the other ones - that can be used only for charging. Yes, right now it's very obvious to me but at the time it cost me a few hours until I realised that I don't have the proper cable and had to search for a suitable one. 

When I found the right cable the Thingy was immediately available (my Linux system instantly recognised it and opened it's contents in the file browser, after that the device was selectable in any relevant application from the nRF Connect for Desktop suite) and ready for the next steps.

I had already downloaded the current firmware+applications version (thingy91---hardware-files-1_6_0.zip) and I was able to upload the firmware and the thingy91_serial_lte_modem_2023-06-01_0677b099.hex applicatoioon according to the video instructions (with MCUboot mode enabled).

Then the step for activating the eSIM and registering in the nRF Cloud came. I disconnected the device, turned it on and the LEDs started slowly pulsing with yellow-green light.

I selected the plus button at top left, then "Add new LTE Device".

On the first page of the wizard i entered the required data and the check seemingly passed. I'm not sure how relevant this page is (it shows that there is no iBASIS coverage here in Bulgaria) but the activation passed and later I could see the card listed in the "SIM Cards" tab.

On the third page after filling in the required fields clicking the Add Device presented me with error with code 40412 and link to this relevant page for troubleshooting.

The problem is that after this step the LEDs stopped and the device remained dark. I tried the suggested solutions but no matter what cable I use the device can not be seen anymore on any linked computer and can't be seen in the Select Device menus in any of the applications on any of the computers that it was successfully linked to previously.

A this point my question is: should and can I make some sort of a factory reset and how?

Regards,

Ivan Popov

[Ivan Popov]

Hi Øyvind,

We are just searching through our possible options for a local LTE-M provider (the NB-IoT connectivity doesn't seem to be suitable for our case of sending frequent vibration data from the IMU) because I've seen elsewhere in the forum that it is possible to use another SIM provider with nrfCloud.

Further on we are checking the possibilities to write our own software to receive and manage the data from the sensors. I guess your presentation here is good starting point?

There's so much ground to cover but it's quite exciting and interesting.

Cheers!

Ivan

[Øyvind]

Ivan Popov said:

elsewhere in the forum that it is possible to use another SIM provider with nrfCloud

nRF Cloud is only used to activate and manage the iBasis SIM provided with your DK or Thingy:91. There is no special SIM provider needed to use nRF Cloud.

Ivan Popov said:

Further on we are checking the possibilities to write our own software to receive and manage the data from the sensors. I guess your presentation here is good starting point?

Yes, you can start with that, but please note that the video is fairly outdated in regards to our latest version of the SDK. You can follow that webinar, but there are changes introduced to later versions.

You could have a look at our partner Golioth.io, they have upcoming trainings
https://blog.golioth.io/free-zephyr-training-hosted-by-golioth-june-7th-2023/

Jared Wolff a.k.a. Circuit Dojo also has some good videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/circuitdojo

These cover a lot of ground, and provide a lot of good insight in the Zephyr OS. 

[Ivan Popov]

Thanks for all of these resources! I'll definitely make some time to check them.
We are waiting for some more confirmations but it appear that finding a proper operator that supports at least one of the two protocols here will be problematic. I guess that freezes the usage of Thingy:91 for us for the moment. :/ Very sad. 

On the device level I watched the logs in the LTE Link Monitor - the missing network was confirmed there; and the RSSI Viewer only shows an empty diagram.

The person who bought the device was actually convinced that we will be able to use it through WiFi but we've seen that this is not an option. The same goes for the other two Thing:53 units which we'll have to access through a Blutooth Mesh or with a Zigbee Gateway.

I guess at this point I'll just close the ticket.

Thank you for your support, Øyvind!

Best regards,

Ivan