Modem went off by itself

Troubleshooting
1

Problem: this unit has been working for several months. The modem went off, last received note was Mar 10.

  • notes are still added to the .qo
  • the notecard is set for continuous mode
  • signal is ok – right next to another unit that works

The answer is probably to power cycle or reboot, but I really need to understand what is happening.
Here is the list of commands:

card.status
{‘status’: ‘{normal}’, ‘storage’: 5, ‘time’: 1611183599}

card.version
{‘body’: {‘org’: ‘Blues Wireless’, ‘product’: ‘Notecard’, ‘version’: ‘notecard-1.5.2’, ‘ver_major’: 1, ‘ver_minor’: 5, ‘ver_patch’: 2, ‘ver_build’: 12332, ‘built’: ‘Jan 11 2021 09:29:25’}, ‘version’: ‘notecard-1.5.2.12332’, ‘device’: ‘dev:866258040554XXX’, ‘name’: ‘Blues Wireless Notecard’, ‘board’: ‘1.8’}

card.wireless
{‘status’: ‘{modem-off}’, ‘count’: 1, ‘net’: {‘iccid’: ‘89011703278306890XXX’, ‘imsi’: ‘310170830689XXX’, ‘imei’: ‘866258040554XXX’, ‘modem’: ‘EG91NAFBR05A05M4G_01.005.01.005’, ‘band’: ‘LTE BAND 12’, ‘rat’: ‘lte’, ‘rssir’: -67, ‘rssi’: -68, ‘rsrp’: -109, ‘sinr’: 40, ‘rsrq’: -20, ‘bars’: 1, ‘mcc’: 310, ‘mnc’: 410, ‘lac’: 16134, ‘cid’: 130714896, ‘updated’: 1616077730}}

hub.sync.status
{‘alert’: True, ‘status’: “connect delayed (7 min remaining): can’t open session to discovery service: socket open PPP: ppp connection timeout? {service}{extended-service-failure}”, ‘time’: 1616064067, ‘sync’: True, ‘completed’: 17073}

2

Hi @Francois. Thanks for posting this question here. Good to hear from you.

Based on your description of the PPP connection timeout, I am pretty sure I know what the issue is. We recently discovered that devices that hasn’t been power cycled for about 50 days aren’t able to talk to our servers. It is still connecting to the cell network, just fails to exchange messages with our server, and so the modem gets shut down.

We have a fix available. I will set you up to get the fix. As of today 18 March 2021, the fix is not available in the list of Notecard firmware updates on Notehub.

1 Like
3

@gwolff Would it be possible to see the Release Notes from this version of the Firmware? Either posted or if confidential under NDA?

4

@gwolff - we too have a device in the field that is running in continuous mode, and it would be a big problem if it stopped communicating and required someone to go to the device to cycle power. Can we update the device remotely to fix the problem? If so, can you publish some instructions on how to do this. Beyond that, we have several other devices to ship next week, so need to get a fix for those before they get into the field…asap.

5

Yes @ec123 . We can do it remotely.

In general over-the-air firmware update instructions are available here:
https://dev.blues.io/operate/notehub-walkthrough/#manage-notecard-firmware

In this case as of today 19 March 2021, the firmware fix hasn’t been made public yet, so the instructions linked above won’t enable this fix.

Anyone else who may needs this update, please email support@blues.io, or click the “Talk to us” button and make your request for a firmware update.

6

@gwolff I think @ec123 question may be whether firmware upgrades as per instructions require switching first from continuous to periodic. This used to be the case a long while back, so my bad if I am confusing @ec123.

7

@Francois
Switching to periodic mode from continuous is no longer required. That was an issue we resolved in our beta releases.