Notecard Note-WBEX-500 + Notecarrier AA: cannot connect to cellular network (green led flashes once)

1

Good morning everyone,

I am completely new to the notecard concept, and I like it a lot, so I ordered a couple of cards to start working with them.
I bought a Note-WBEX-500 with a Notecarrier AA, because at a later stage I will need to use an external SIM card.
For the moment, I followed the quick start guide but I was stuck when the notecard is supposed to blink the green led…The card starts fine (red led flashing quicker and quicker than stops), I can connect via the browser-based serial interface and read some information from the notecard, and at a given point I see the green led flashing once. Then nothing.
When I raise the command “card.wireless” I see the following information before the green led flashes

> {"req":"card.wireless"}

{
 "status": "{modem-on}",
 "net": {
  "iccid": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "imsi": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "imei": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "modem": "EG91EXGAR08A05M1G_01.001.01.001"
 }
}

then, after the green led has flashed, I see that the “status” line indicates “modem-off”.
I tried using a more powerful USB power supply, I tried to add AA batteries, but I do not seem to be able to connect to the cellular network.
I am in Switzerland in an area with excellent cellular coverage, I already checked the troubleshooting guide (including the antenna connection), and the trace log do not produce any useful information…
Anybody has any idea on what I am doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!

2

FIgured it out myself…actually the “quickstart guide” may be a bit misleading :slight_smile:

If the notehub is not configured, the cellular modem doesn’t do anything. Once I finished setting up the notehub I was able to connect to the cellular network and to transmit my json test reading, as indicated in the tutorial.
So, by default, the green led does not blink.

3

Hi Lorenzo,

Thanks for posting your question on the forum.

I have checked with the cellular provider, and that Notecard has indeed connected with Notehub over the cellular network.

The latest session was at 2022-04-05 12:40:13pm UTC+00:00.

The session was very short, so I suspect you wouldn’t see the LED on for more than 30 seconds or so.

The green LED only appears when the modem is on. The default mode on the Notecard shuts off the modem once the data exchange with Notehub is complete. So I would expect the green LED to shut off once it’s complete.

You can review this post here: What do the Notecard LED blink patterns mean?

Hope that helps.

-Greg

4

Glad you figured it out! I didn’t see you’re reply before I posted.

As you pointed out, if the Product UID is not configured, the Notecard will not attempt to connect with the network.

The hub.sync.status request will return a message about the Product UID

 {"req":"hub.sync.status"}
{
 "status": "product UID has not yet been specified (set using hub.set) {product-noexist}",
 "time": 1649162956,
 "completed": 3
}

In fact, Notecard won’t permit doing much of anything if the Product UID has not been set.

5

Thanks for the confirmation gwolff.

After reading your reply, a question raises…in the project on which I am currently working, we envision a direct communication between a notecard and another, in a peer-to-peer fashion…so essentially we would not probably need the notehub. Is this something we can do with the notecards, or they are just meant for collecting data on the field and sending them on the notehub? Thanks in advance for your reply to this off-topic question