I bought a few Notecards for Skylo when they first came out (NBGLWX). I didn’t do any good with them at the time, so I put them away. I just tried again, but I just can’t get them to connect over the NTN network. They connect fine over cellular. FW version is 11.3.1.17696. After issuing {“req”:“card.transport”,“method”:“ntn”} and {“req”:“hub.sync”,“out”:true}, it spends for ever waiting for a service. The modem also does not seem to be able to find a GPS fix. NTN and GPS antennas are external and “known good”. I’d be grateful for any insights into the attached log?
Just to add: The Notecard was operating on a Notecarrier XS with no external MCU.
This means the Notecard’s only seeing 2 satellites, which isn’t enough to get a GPS fix. In order to connect to the satellite network, the modem needs to know its location, and since it can’t get a GPS fix, it can’t connect to the network.
It’s taken me a while to get back to this, sorry!
I changed my GPS antenna to my best directional (passive) antenna and yes, I finally did get it to connect over ntn. It took a while though. I have also enabled the NBGLWX to take an active GPS antenna on my own custom board. That was also able to connect, although, again, it took a while (>5 min). My impression is that the connect time is a lot longer with the NBGLWX, but maybe I’ve just been unlucky so far. I’ll keep an eye on it. Thanks again for your help Hayden!
Notecard+Starnote is really humming now. It is a 1000% on where we were just a year ago. Well done! As for the NBGLWX, it still does not seem as optimized as it should be. I found some testing data from a few months ago which showed that time to connection was quite slow (av ~12min) compared to the Notecard+Skylo (av ~1min). I’ve just run it again for a few days and, although better, it is still taking 3 - 7min to connect. Time to GPS fix was also quite slow (4-11min). I was using an active GPS antenna and my best directional antenna pointing up for the Notecards.
Just picking this thread up again. I did another experiment comparing connect times between a NBGLWX and a NOTE-NBGL+Starnote. I ran the two side-by-side, same external antennas for NTN and GPS. The NBGLWX in a Notecarrier A and the NOTE-NBGL+Starnote in a Notecarrier XS. No MCU, no code, just “card.transport”,“method”:“ntn” and “hub.sync”,“out”:true
As you can see, the NBGLWX takes roughly double the time to register to the network. For my use case (battery operation), this is a big impost. Could this be a firmware optimization issue, or is this more likely a baked-in hardware issue?
Hey Ray. Sorry for the delay in responding here. We are aware that Notecard for Skylo is slower in terms of registration time compared to Starnote for Skylo. Unfortunately, this comes down to differences in modem behavior between the two devices, and we’re not able to do anything about it at this time. I wish I had better news for you.
hi @tremmert
Hope someone from Blues can answer that. I suspect that it will involve a new hardware spin which won’t be an easy decision for them. For me the slow connects are only a small part of the problem. The more serious part is that often this notecard version doesn’t manage to connect at all, not for days. It is a shame because I was really looking forward to changing to the NBGLWX. It make so much sense as far as board real estate goes and I was very much looking forward to being able to connect an active GPS which the Skylo modem can’t do.
Ray
I’ve been looking into this this week, and so far haven’t found anything else we can do to speed up registration. We reached out to the modem vendor about new firmware for the modem, and we’re on their latest version already. I’ll come back to this thread if I find anything, though.
The more serious part is that often this notecard version doesn’t manage to connect at all, not for days.
That’s certainly unexpected! If you are able to capture a Notecard trace log with modem trace enabled when you’re experiencing one of these blackouts, I’d love to look into this.
Hi Hayden
Circling back to the NBGLWX connectivity again, and esp the NTN side. My impression from past trials was that when there was a failed connection, it happened most from cold starts. So, I did another test booting from cold 12 times over 8 days.
On three occasions it failed to make a connection over NTN and once over cell. A log of the last failed connection is attached. I’m not sure you can glean much from it, except maybe the lack of obtaining a GPS fix? NBGLWX6.log (15.2 KB)
Hey Ray. Thanks for collecting this data, but unfortunately I can’t really tell much from the trace log without trace +modem. That should give us more information about the signal quality.
Thanks for your patience. I am collecting some data of my own with my own NBGLWX rig to see how it compares with the registration times you’re seeing.
In 11.3.2, we fixed a bug that is present in the 11.3.1 firmware that you are using. From the release notes:
Fixed a bug where Notecard could get stuck in a state where it was unable to communicate with Notehub when trying to use Notecard’s GPS.
11.4.1, the latest version, has this fix, too, of course. I think this bug could be playing a role in the cases where you are seeing the Notecard not connect at all.
Hi Hayden,
I did the FW upgrade and the second cold start over NTN failed. Hopefully there is some meat in this log? Note-NBGLWX_log_30Sep26.txt (61.9 KB)
Thanks for the additional log. The signal quality looks decent.
I want to see how long it takes your device to get a GPS fix from cold boot. When you do an NTN sync from cold boot, the GPS stuff that the modem needs in order to communicate with Skylo is handled under the covers by the modem; we do not have visibility into whether lack of GPS fix is the problem. However, we should be able to do the following and see how long a GPS seek takes. Note that this assumes you are in cell coverage.
Change transport to cell: {"req":"card.transport","method":"cell"}.
Make sure your card.location.mode setting is still active (mode:periodic, seconds:N).
Power cycle the Notecard (fully remove and re-apply power; don’t just reset the Notecard).
Start collecting the trace log.
Two things should happen from here:
The cell sync goes first.
After that, the GPS seek should kick off.
If you could do that and share the trace log, we should be able to see how long the GPS seek takes from cold boot.
In the attached log you’ll see 2 connections over cellular. Both from cold starts, just over an hour apart. The first time it seemed to connect to Notehub, but did not sync my files. It hung on the line:
“S02:56.25 sync: request: resetting session ID because we need to resync notebox”. It did not do a GPS seek. I left it powered for over an hour.
The second time, it connected and sync’d ok, then went into a GPS seek as you expected and got a fix after about 78s. Hope there is some good grist for the mill there? notecard_2026-10-01T05_40_23.log (65.9 KB)
