Sentrius™ MG100 Gateway with LTE-M/NB-IoT and Bluetooth 5

LTE Cat 6 is a high-speed mobile data technology mainly used in consumer devices for fast internet connectivity. Unfortunately, MG100 Gateway does not support LTE Cat 6. Instead, MG100 supports LTE-M and NB-IoT. LTE-M/NB-IoT are low-power, wide-area network technologies optimized for IoT and M2M applications that require long battery life and extended coverage.

If you would like to see the Modem's signal strength it can be viewed using the "attr get lte_rsrp" command.

These instructions are intended for Linux or Macintosh OS. They may work using WSL, Cigwin, or other bash style terminals in Windows although this is untested. 

It may be desired to communicate with a device attached to the USB-SWD without terminal emulation, I.E. Picocom, Screen, Putty.  This can be useful for writing bash scripts, or if you're using Zephyr's "west flash" and would like a quick way to check your output. 

1. Verify you have the program "stty" available using the command "which stty", if this does not return a value you will need to install it.  Fortunately "stty" generally comes standard with Linux and MacOS.  
2. Identify your serial device.  This can be done using the command "dmesg -w" then connecting the USB-SWD.  You will see output like this (In Linux).

3. (Optional) Assign the device name to a variable, for example "DEVICE=/dev/ttyACM0".
4. Configure "stty" to talk with the device "stty -F $DEVICE 115200 -echo -echoe -echok"
5. To see output from the device execute "cat $DEVICE &".  This will send serial communication from the device to Linux's standard output.  The "&" is to run this program in the background.
6. Now press the reset button on the USB-SWD, you should see the output from your device.  In this example the Zephyr "Hello World" example has been flashed to a BT510. 

7. (Optional) if you would like to send commands back to the device you can use "echo" or add an argument to your shell, "foo() { echo -n -e "$1\r" > $DEVICE; }".  Now commands can be issued directly from the command line, for example "foo "my_command"" will send the string "my_command" to the device. 

Both Pinnacle and MG100 both are programmable using Zephyr RTOS. Zephyr is essentially a kernel but compare to other RTOS it has got other software running on its code, like drivers for sensors, logs output and even a shell subsystem.

Besides providing a quick proof of concept, our out-of-box demo software are a good starting point for your own IoT cloud application.
The out-of-box software comes directly with output UART logs that provides immediate information on what is going on in the background.

Within a UART log window open via e.g a terminal software like Putty, it is possible to access a shell command line interface by simply pushing "Tab" on your keyboard as follows :

This allows to quickly show or set up multiple different parameters and can be useful for development purposes.

The max MTU is 1500 bytes but the network operator can set a lower value, it also depends on the Internet Protocol Version (IPV4,IPV6), and the protocol itself (UDP/TCP). If max MTU size is 1500 bytes then :

• IPV4, default value = 1020 bytes
  For UDP: 8 – 1472 bytes max
  For TCP:  8 – 1460 bytes max
• IPV6, default value = 1020 bytes
  For UDP: 8 – 1452 bytes max
  For TCP: 8 – 1440 bytes max

If user application send more than the MTU limitation, the module will display those data with several URCS (Unsolicited Result Codes).

The MG100 is indeed suitable for working with Azure IoT Edge or HUB. However, we don't have anything in term of documentation nor example code that customers can leverage for now.

Error 922 can happen if you try closing a socket that was already closed by the server.
Error 923 can happen if trying to send data on a socket that is already closed.

These are very common and expected errors than can happened during normal functioning. Our out of the box software are designed to properly clean up and ignore them.

Customers can use following command to increase the log level of the HL7800 driver at runtime to get more info:

attr set 201 3   <- HL7800 info log level
attr set 201 4  <- HL7800 debug log level

Sometimes you can get a series of network state 0 and 2; in that case it means the modem cannot find any network to join:

• Network state 0 (Not Registered) means the modem is idle.
• Network state 2 (Searching) means the modem is searching for a network.

When a modem finds and joins a network, it issues network state such as 1(Registered, Home Network) or 5 (Registered, Roaming).

A network state 3 (Registration Denied) means either the network selected is incorrect for the IoT SIM Card, or the SIM is inactive/disabled.

You are free to leave the APN (Access Point Name) blank, but we advise to set it up when possible as it's always safest to do so. It's also usually recommended by IoT SIM provider.

Entering an APN often helps to quickly reach proper network frequencies bands. To know exactly what APN you need to enter, please contact your SIM provider.

Entering an APN can be done through either the Pinnacle phone application or via UART with command attr set 196 "apn"

The MG100 has no IP rating.

Some customers may have a need for the MG100 main board to be mounted in an IP6x rated enclosure. In this case, Laird Connectivity has compiled two commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) design recommendations that meet IP6x requirements using readily available components here : Application Note - MG100 IP6x COTS Housing Recommendation

On the Pinnacle 100 MQTT is implemented in the Zephyr IP stack. The MQTT protocol managed by IP stack in Zephyr running on the nRF52840. The MQTT layer uses sockets in order to send and receive data. The HL7800 driver in Zephyr does all the work to expose socket APIs to be used by a user app or other software layers.

This approach provides a lot of flexibility. The Pinnacle 100 supports anything that the Zephyr IP stack supports.

Laird customers get instant access to Memfault's device observability platform for up to 100 devices free forever. To get started with Memfault for remote debugging, continuous monitoring, and OTA firmware updates, sign up here.

• Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide
• With additional integration and configuration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird connected device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

You can use Memfault to remotely monitor the health of their devices and debug issues in both the Pinnacle 100 and MG100 Gateway designs. Laird customers get instant access to Memfault for up to 100 devices free forever.

• Sign up here and follow the steps on the Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide to get started with Memfault.
• With additional integration and configuration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird embedded device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

For analyzing overall performance patterns in your fleet, metrics can easily be collected using our Memfault integration with the Pinnacle 100 and Sentrius MG100. Laird customers get instant access to Memfault for up to 100 devices free forever. 

• Sign up here and follow the steps on the Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide to get started with Memfault.
• With additional integration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird embedded device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

Everything needed to get started with our Out of the Box Demos for the Pinnacle 100 cellular modem and the MG100 cellular gateway can be found on GitHub

A demo video for the Pinnacle 100 is also linked on the Product page for additional reference.

You do not need to build the OOB Demo on your own, if you have need to upgrade your OOB Demo version on your Pinnacle 100 modem or MG100 gateway, please use our official releases found here: https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle-100-Firmware/releases.

Found at this link are several firmware file types depending on how you plan to upgrade, *.hex is for SWD while *.bin is used for BLE, UART, and HTTP over LTE. Additionally, 480-00052 is for the Pinnacle 100 and 480-00070 is for the MG100.

See the Firmware Updates section for how to upgrade over the different interfaces, BLE/UART/HTTP over LTE

To upgrade over SWD, use the JLINK USB port on the Pinnacle 100 DVK board, for the MG100 see the MG100 Hardware Guide section 5.4.4 to learn how to connect a J-Link debugger to the board for the upgrade using nRF Connect or Nordic Command Line Tools.

On Windows 10 when building firmware such as oob_demo firmware I am getting the following error: ninja: error: FindFirstFileExA(c/:/oob_demo/oob_demo/src): The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect can you help me to correct this?

The ninja: error: FindFirstFileExA(c/:/oob_demo/oob_demo/src): The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect, may be thrown if you have previously set up a Zephyr environment. This indicates ninja needs to be upgraded. If west update did not update ninja to the latest version enter choco upgrade ninja --force in cmd.exe as administrator to force the upgrade:

C:\Windows\system32>choco upgrade ninja --force

We suggest using Visual Studio Code, please see the following for more information: https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle_100_oob_demo/blob/master/docs/development.md

• We suggest using Memfault for an out-of-the-box fault debugging and device observability solution. Memfault integrates seamlessly with Zephyr on the Pinnacle 100 and Sentrius MG100. Laird customers get instant access to Memfault for up to 100 devices free forever.
  • Sign up here and follow the steps on the Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide to get started with Memfault.
  • With additional integration and configuration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird embedded device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

Laird Connectivity is committed to the long-term supply of all its standard embedded wireless modules and packaged products. Laird Connectivity’s products are specifically designed to meet the needs of the industrial and medical markets, which typically require 7 – 10 years product lifecycle. Although Laird Connectivity can’t guarantee that a component used in our products will not be obsoleted and cannot be reasonably substituted, Laird Connectivity can assure customers we will continue to sell our product when we have customer demand and can obtain the necessary components to build our products.

View our full policy here.