I see it looks like the BalenaFin supports the EC25 module from Quectel very robustly.
Would a modem like the Quectel BG96 work over USB in the same manner with a Pi/BalenaFin? https://sixfab.com/product/raspberry-pi-lte-m-nb-iot-egprs-cellular-hat/
Looking to support some connectivity easily through ModemManager and leverage Balena for management via cellular networks.
Hi there,
I’m not sure whether we’ve tested this device with balenaOS. I’ve asked our team to see if anyone has used one. Other than that I can only give you the general advice that if it works with Raspbian it can be made to work with balenaOS with varying degrees of messing around required to make it work. Doing some googling seems to indicate that the device relies on quite a new raspberry pi firmware version, which AFAICT we haven’t shipped yet in our production images (I am not a member of the balenaOS team though, so I can’t be sure). I don’t want to say it can’t be done, but I also don’t want to underestimate how annoying troubleshooting cellular connections can be. I’ll let you know if one of the team pipes up and says they’ve used one before.
Good luck!
James.
Hi, adding to what my colleague said, here is the list of the modems we currently test our OS with: https://github.com/balena-os/meta-balena#modems
This is not to say that the Quectel BG96 won’t work with balenaOS, we just have not tested it. I would be interested in knowing if it works as expected if you have the hw to give it a go.
Thanks both for the insight! I may give it a go and will report back on the BG96. Is there much difference between the base BalenaFin image/firmware and a RaspberryPi image?
With regards to the modem support, there are no differences between rpi and balenaFin images at the same version
Following up to this after getting hardware to test against. Thanks for the inputs above!
I am able to see the modem through mmcli -m 0 which lists the capabilities of the modem.
From there I checked the network manager configuration which I loaded in resin-boot with:
nmcli dev Which shows:
I checked the logs and I am getting:
Aug 10 06:18:50 9f27aee NetworkManager[1210]: <warn> [1597040330.6989] modem-broadband[cdc-wdm0]: failed to connect modem: Network timeout
Aug 10 06:18:50 9f27aee NetworkManager[1210]: <info> [1597040330.7042] device (cdc-wdm0): state change: prepare -> failed (reason 'gsm-registration-timeout', sys-iface-state: 'manage>
Aug 10 06:18:50 9f27aee NetworkManager[1210]: <warn> [1597040330.7615] device (cdc-wdm0): Activation: failed for connection 'hologram-connection'
Aug 10 06:18:50 9f27aee NetworkManager[1210]: <info> [1597040330.7751] device (cdc-wdm0): state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Aug 10 06:18:50 9f27aee NetworkManager[1210]: <info> [1597040330.8214] device (cdc-wdm0): Activation: starting connection 'hologram-connection' (fd404976-f443-3241-8464-0a3b536f8506)
Aug 10 06:18:50 9f27aee NetworkManager[1210]: <info> [1597040330.8272] device (cdc-wdm0): state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Trying to figure out how to debug and see what might be causing issues.
Hey @kylixz,
Could you please provide us the entire ModemManager debug logs, so that we can assist you further?
What you could do is open a terminal session, stop the ModemManager service with systemctl and then run manually ModemManager, e.g. ModemManager --debug 2>&1 | tee /mnt/data/mm-logs-01.txt. After this, you could grab the file with a service like file.io or transfer.sh and share this file with us here.
Thanks,
Georgia
Georgia,
Thanks so much for your help.
Here’s a log file: https://file.io/iingathDVAnf
I tried both a Hologram Sim and a Verizon SIM (Which I did not expect to work with the BG96).
Hi @kylixz, I cannot download the file - I think it is only allowed to be downloaded once. Can you please attach it here through the Upload chat button?
Thanks,
Zahari
Hey @kylixz, I wanted to check if you managed to proceed with the modem?
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to download the logs you shared with us. Please let us know if you need any further help.
Georgia