Thingy 91, cannot connect to cellular network or register in nRF for Cloud.

[shoei600]

I have taken a new Thingy:91 out of the box, fitted ibasics sim card and been through the registration process. Sim registers fine, but the 'add new LTE device' does not recognise the two numbers and always rejects them. Meanwhile the device is on with blue LED blinking for 2 seconds with 5 seconds off between.

I have USB connection to the device and have tried various commands of LTE-M or LTE-NB without success, and have connected external antenna. If I put ibasic sim in an unlocked mobile it connects to the UK O2 network without issue.

Following the instructions I have created a certificate but this will not upload as it fails with buffer overrun everytime.

What else needs to be done to get this registered and connected? 

Of course the promotional video showed this to be very easy, effortless, out of the box setup.

Thanks.

[Martin Lesund]

Hi Shoei600,

Please check which the Coverage list for iBasis for your area as well as the official GSMA Deployment Map to see which network supports what in your area.

I would highly recommend getting a local SIM card from the network carrier which has support for the network in your area. 

Please open LTE Link Monitor and uncheck the "Automatic Request" and the "Auto device/port filter":

Then connect the Thingy:91 via USB and select the port at the bottom:

Then you should eventually see some information being printed to the terminal (similar to this):

Please wait for a while and then send the log:

You could also try to Enable the "Automatic requests" and send the AT Command: AT+CFUN?

Then you should get out some additional information from the Modem:

I do suspect that the iBasis SIM is not supported in your area, in which case you need to use a local SIM. 

(Even if it looked like the iBasis SIM "worked" in your cellphone, it does not mean that it got connected to the correct network technology (LTE-M/NB-IoT))

Best regards,

Martin L.

[shoei600]

Hi Martin,

I have followed your instructions and have not managed to get any output at all on the terminal for the modem port using either local sim or ibasics. I do get some text for the first port only in both cases.

The ibasics website does say it has 'limited' connectivity in the UK which is then illustrated on the GDMA map as the whole of the uk provided by Vodafone. I am in central London so I would expect ibasics to be supported here but when in the mobile it had connected to O2 not Vodafone.

I have an LTE-M sim ordered which will hopefully solve the issue, but please confirm that you would expect nothing to be in the log at all if there was no connection. 

Please also confirm if it is possible to setup this device to use regular connection with regular sim, not just LTE-M/NB-IoT, if so, how (as I have sim cards already).

Thanks,

James.

[Martin Lesund]

Thank you for sharing the log.
From what I can tell you the iBasis SIM card does not have a roaming network to connect to. 
You should be able to connect to the nb-iot network when you get the local SIM card and flash the NB-IoT version of the FW to the Thingy:91. (since NB-IoT is only supported in your area)

Here is the Guide on how you can switch out the FW on the Thingy:91 without a programmer.

Here is the Thingy:91 FW

[shoei600]

Hi Martin,

I ran into problems going through this last night when issuing the instruction, the message returned 'cannot find file'.

Should the firmware be in any specific location? I have assumed I can skip the 'compiling' section as I am using pre-compiled binary file. Please confirm this example looks correct?

mcumgr --conntype=serial --connstring=9 image upload C:\mynamefolder\path\filename.bin

Getting hold of an NB-IoT sim in UK is proving very difficult but I'm hopeful one will arrive today. It appears the UK has only NB-IoT deployed so once this firmware is switched over from LTE-M the ibasics one may work.

Thanks,

James.

[shoei600]

Martin,

Could you please confirm this mcumgr string in the previous post?

Thanks,

James.

[Martin Lesund]

Hi Shoei600,

The serial port should be addressed as COM9 in your case.

mcumgr --conntype=serial --connstring=COM<serial port> image upload <image>

(I have requested an update to the tutorial to make it more clear)

ex.

[Smythey]

Hi James

I also live in London and have had the same problem as you did. Did you manage to get the Thingy:91 working and, if so what did you do? I am happy to buy a NB-IoT SIM if you coould tell me where you got yours.

Thanks

Steve