nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

Håkon Alseth — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:58:08 GMT

Hi Filip,

That does not sound good. If you create a new case, and share a modem trace with the crash, we will try to help you out.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

tdfilip — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:53:12 GMT

Hello, I'm facing the similar issue. I'm using nRF9160 with mfw v1.3.7 and ncs v2.9.0. I can't trigger the issue on demand but it happens randomly and then the following log occurs:
Modem has crashed, reason 0x10, PC: 0x637b2
One thing I observed is that the error occurs always while the application is looking for a single gnss fix - it never happened while connecting to LTE. The access to a modem is available for one module at a time (LTE / GNSS).

Do you have any thoughts about such an issue?

Regards,
Filip

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

Håkon Alseth — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 13:00:03 GMT

Hi Alf,

My apologies for the late reply.

To be explicit about the modem assert that you originally observed: This is related to a corner case with high priority search, which we addressed with mfw v1.3.6.

[quote user="Alfie321"]What we find from your mfw compatibility matrix, the 1.3.6 needs SDK 2.5.1.
How strict is this?[/quote]

Not strict. There is no LTE related changes between ncs v2.5.0 and v2.5.1 (see here: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/nrf/releases_and_maturity/releases/release-notes-2.5.1.html), so I would say that this is a oversight from our side, which I will report internally.

That being said, we always recommend that you test your devices thoroughly before doing any form of FOTA upgrade, in case there are any problems with the overall process.

Let me know if you run into any issues or have any questions.

Kind regards,

Håkon

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

Alfie321 — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:03:14 GMT

Thank you Øyvind!

We might do some tests with MFW 1.3.6 on some devices, but on our "out in field devices" currently running 1.3.2 this is not so simple.

What we find from your mfw compatibility matrix, the 1.3.6 needs SDK 2.5.1.
How strict is this?

Alf

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

Øyvind — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:39:10 GMT

Alf, are you able to test with modem FW 1.3.6 on any of your devices?

-Øyvind

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

Øyvind — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:35:06 GMT

Hi Alf, a small update. The modem team will have a look into this and see if they can find anything.

[quote user=""]Of course there are a lot of connect calls performed earlier that works just fine, but here the modem seems to have crashed and causing the error.[/quote]

Are you able to tell how far in the application this happens? I.e. what calls were performed before this? Anything that can help our team find the culprit.

Kind regards,
Øyvind

RE: nRF9160 on a custom board having modem crash, reason 0x10

Øyvind — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 14:14:15 GMT

Hi Alf,

Very difficult to tell exactly what is causing this, as I could not find anything directly related to the PC. This is definitely something from the modem which will need a modem trace to be 100% sure.

But I have forwarded the first line to our modem team and hope to get something to help pinpoint the issue.

[quote user=""]Is is possible to recover the modem after such a crash, or is a reset the only way?[/quote]

Reset is most likely the only way to recover, but hope to have more answers from our team by end of tomorrow.

Kind regards,
Øyvind