Thingy:91 external LTE antenna

[YanivYon]

Hi

I am testing my thingy:91 and was promised by my provider that we would get NB-IoT reception in basements in the city.

unfortunately, that doesn't work and I lose reception as soon as I start going downstairs.

Is there a connector for an external LTE antenna? according to the schematics, there is only an external Bluetooth connector and an LTE measurement connector (which I can't identify)

Thanks

[Øyvind]

Hello, 

What version of the Thingy:91 are you using? From the Thingy:91 Hardware guide in our Infocenter there are HW figures which shows where connector are located 

Are you able to collect logs from the device while testing in the basements? E.g. modem traces will provide needed information. Are you able to test with e.g. nRF9160DK to verify antenna issue?

What application are you running on the device while testing?

Kind regards,
Øyvind

[YanivYon]

I think I am using the same hardware revision you refer to, which doesn't show an external LTE connector
I only tested it with nrfcloud.com, which naturally died, once I entered the basement

can I connect from my phone to see live logs?

as I understand it should install the Cellular Monitor App on my nRF desktop, flash it to the thingy:91, collect data, and then read it back on the PC.

will do that today.

[Øyvind]

Hello, 

You can add an external antenna to the J1 connector. This should automatically switch to the external antenna. I would recommend testing with e.g. Asset Tracker v2 with debug enabled. On the project page of Thingy:91 you can find our Precompiled application and modem firmware packages which includes: 

These files were built with nRF Connect SDK version v2.5.0
from sdk-nrf repository (https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf)

Full commit SHA: 1fae141fc6713dd331b797fc96c90dc84552242d

Folder contents:
img_app_bl/
  - Full application images including bootloader.
  - These files can be used with:
    - nRF Connect Programmer (only with SEGGER J-Link or another debug probe)
    - nrfjprog CLI
img_fota_dfu_hex/
  - These images contain only application and bootloader is not included.
  - Images are in HEX format.
  - These files can be used with nRF Connect Programmer (only via USB bootloader).
img_fota_dfu_bin/
  - These images contain only application and bootloader is not included.
  - Images are in binary format.
  - These files can be used with:
    - Over-the-air update, for example, via nRF Cloud, Azure or AWS.
    - mcumgr CLI (via USB bootloader only)

The following folders contain images configured for modem debugging:
  - img_app_bl/debug
  - img_fota_dfu_hex/debug
  - img_fota_dfu_bin/debug

I would recommend testing the device connected to a computer to collect logs directly through the Cellular Monitor app, this way you can see how much of a difference an external antenna will do.

Kind regards,
Øyvind