I am working with a board one of my peers designed that hopes to use an NRF9160 for cellular communication (and GPS as well but that's neither here nor there). When setting up a fresh board I follow these steps:
Step 1. Power up the board and flash the latest modem onto the NRF9160.
(Fig. 1 We can see that the chip is recognized through the Jlink and I am able to program it here)
(Fig. 2 Latest firmware file added and we can see further that we are talking to the correct chip)
(Fig. 3 Modem is programmed onto NRF9160)
(Fig. 4 Modem is programmed onto the NRF9160 part 2, we can see that the chip has something or other on it now)
Step 2. After I have the modem on the chip, I switch to VSCode to try and flash example code, in this case the at_monitor example to try out some of the cellular functionality
(Fig. 5 We can see that the NRF9160 is recognized in VSCode as well as it shows up as a connector device, and is the same as the one we saw in the programmer)
(Fig. 6 VSCode doesn't through any errors and flashes the at_monitor example onto the board)
Step 3. Open up the LTE Link Monitor App on the NRFConnect and try sending some AT commands to check out some of the cellular functionality
(Fig. 7 NRF9160 does not show up as a connected device)
This is where it all goes wrong and my dreams are shattered. For the life of me, I cannot get the NRF9160 to show up in the LTE Link Monitor to connect to it and try sending AT commands. The real kicker? Some of my peers were testing this board out about 2 months ago and got the device to connect in the LTE Link Monitor, sent AT commands, saw it working properly, called it good and shelved the board until we needed it later. Well now it's later and I'm re-figuring it out because they did not document any of it. Now, this isn't me trying to bash my peers, more just providing context on the fact that the board should be working on a hardware level as it has worked fine before, but is not now.
I am using the Segger Compact Jlink to connect to the NRF9160, in case that's a problem (also the same way my peers connected to it before):
Random Info: Using Windows 10, Latest SDK, modem, and NRFConnect App versions
Some things I have tried:
- A whole array of power cycling and plug in sequences
- Closing out of VSCode and other NRF Apps before/after opening the LTE Link Monitor, and then also doing different power cycling and plug in sequences
- Bashing my head into a wall (A couple times)
- Swapping out the cellular SIM case the NRF9160 is connected to
- Swapping out the board (I've tried 3 boards now, they all appeared fine and worked other than the LTE Link Monitor)
- Connecting/Disconnecting the cellular antenna from the NRF9160
- Yelling at the chip
- Trying on a different computer (tried 2 other computers now, one of which was my peers which it worked on two months ago)
- Using a different SDK version when programming the NRF9160
If anyone has any ideas of why this is not showing up, I'm game to try anything.
