Pinnacle™ 100 Cellular LTE-M / NB-IoT / Bluetooth 5 Modem

The Pinnacle 100 is a cellular modem which is basically composed of a Sierra HL7800 cellular module (Altair ALT1250 chipset) mated with a nRF52840 Nordic BLE chipset. The nRF52840 being provided with 2 UARTs, one of them is used to command the Sierra HL7800 cellular chipset. This UART that both HL7800 and nRF52840 share is called UART1, it is only accessible via non populated connector J2 on the Pinnacle 100 PCB:

If actively using UART1 to command the HL7800 from another host, please make sure to disable nRF52840 UART end to avoid conflict between respective external host and nRF52840 UARTs.

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).

You'll find last available Sierra HL7800 AT Commands guide here :

https://source.sierrawireless.com/resources/airprime/software/hl78xx_at_commands_interface_guide/#sthash.lX9hhQBp.dpbs

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

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 Pinnacle 100 AT Hosted firmware provide an effective and direct way to alternatively interact via UART with both modules that compose the Pinnacle 100 :

• Sierra HL7800
• Nordic nRF52840

The AT Hosted firmware has been designed from previous BL654 firmware (v29.1.1.0) where the AT Command application code version was 1.01 and library version was 1.20.

Unfortunately, this firmware doesn't allow to assume both BLE (central and peripheral) concurrently as for now.

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

In order to toggle between the HL7800 AT command interface and the smartBASIC AT command interface, the DTR tickbox in UwTerminal needs to be de-asserted (Toggled) and then re-asserted(Toggled) again.  

In the Pinnacle 100 the GPS radio hardware is shared with the LTE radio hardware.
This means LTE needs to temporarily be disabled so that the GPS engine can take over the RF circuit to generate GPS location output.
To disable LTE, Airplane Mode needs to be enabled using the AT command at+cfun=4,0
To disable Airplane Mode again issue at+cfun=1,0.

No, the Pinnacle 100 and the MG100 are LTE Cat-M1 or NB-IoT modems which require their own SIM card and are not compatible with the network your mobile phone uses. Customers need to source SIMs specifically for LTE Cat-M1 or NB-IoT networks through the carriers directly or through an MVNO. 

It is recommend that you reference the https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle_100_OOB_Demo_Manifest for the correct Zephyr branch to use with the Pinnacle 100 to ensure that you will not run into any issues when compiling applications.

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.

The best example to use when designing your Hostless system on the Pinnacle 100 is to use the Out-of-the-Box Demo example as a template. Please see the OOB Demo manifest on our Github repository here for steps to building the firmware: https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle_100_OOB_Demo_Manifest

There should be approximately 750KB of space in the hostless version of the module after loading the soft device and image for the Nordic nRF52840 and Sierra Wireless HL7800.

Yes, any programmer/debugger that supports the SWD 2-wire interface and the Cortex M4F processor should work with the Nordic-based modules. You can find information about the memory map in the nRF5xxxx Product Specification under the Memory and NVMC sections.

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.