Orange Belgium Gpy

[hadjidgr]

Re: NB-IoT support

Good afternoon to all,

I am currently doing an internship in belgium, working on nb-iot. First, i had to program an arduino board so that it could send specific data using Orange Belgium network. It took me a while but since the arduino board had been developed by Orange, most of the AT commands necessary in order to connect to the network had already been programmed by Orange engineers.

Following that first step, i was asked to program the same thing using a Pycom Gpy. However, i do not know for sure if Orange Belgium is one of pycom's partners.
If yes, could anyone tell me the band and cid number required? If not, do you know if by using AT commands, i could successfully connect myself to their network?

Thank you to anyone who might have an answer.
Cheers,
Gregor

[innoguy]

Can anyone from pycom answer this question please? I have the same issue.

[Bettina]

@hadjidgr @innoguy We haven't yet certified on Orange Belgium but I will try to find a contact there to help us progress. It may take a good few days before I can come back but I'll keep you posted.

Thanks
Bettina

[innoguy]

@hadjidgr After some communication with Orange and pycom, I compiled the following list of commands for Orange Belgium (using a Plus SIM card and GPy with NB-IoT modem firmware) but I was not able to make a connection yet:
lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CFUN=0')
lte.send_at_cmd('AT!="clearscanconfig"')
lte.send_at_cmd('AT!="addscanfreq band=20 dl-earfcn=6400"')
lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP",”nbiot.iot"')
lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CFUN=1’)
As said, does not work for me (yet), but maybe it helps you.

[peterv]

@bettina Any news?

[peterv]

So today I managed to get a connection with the NB-1 firmware version 35351, haven't managed with version 37781 though. Here's what I used:

lte = LTE()
def send_at_cmd_pretty(cmd):
    response = lte.send_at_cmd(cmd).split('\r\n')
    for line in response:
        print(line)
send_at_cmd_pretty('AT+CFUN=0')
send_at_cmd_pretty('AT!="clearscanconfig"')
send_at_cmd_pretty('AT!="addscanfreq band=20 dl-earfcn=6400"')
send_at_cmd_pretty('AT!="zsp0:npc 1"')
send_at_cmd_pretty('AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","nbiot.iot"')
send_at_cmd_pretty('AT+CFUN=1')
while not lte.isattached():
    pass

lte.connect()
while not lte.isconnected():
    pass

DNS doesn't work, but I managed to send some data through MQTT to Adafruit IO using the IP address for io.adafruit.com (as opposed to using the hostname).

[peterv]

It somehow started working with version 37781 too, managed to reduce the code to:

lte = LTE()
lte.send_at_cmd('AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","nbiot.iot"')
lte.attach(band=20)
while not lte.isattached():
    machine.idle()
lte.connect()
while not lte.isconnected():
    machine.idle()

DNS is still not working (maybe related to https://forum.pycom.io/topic/2934/lte-nb-iot-dns/4).

[dan]

Hi @peterv,

That's great that you got it working! There's an open issue for DNS on GitHub, as you can see there we are looking into the issue.

[Filip]

Any update on this one ?
Tried all the above using my GPY and an Orange Maker SIM Card, but no luck : can't get the LTE attached.

Apparently different APN's in use (cfr https://docs.allthingstalk.com/networks/use-orangebe-nbiot/ ):
You purchased an Orange NB-IoT Rapid Development Kit and SIM card: starter.att.iot
You purchased an Orange NB-IoT SIM card:
Maker: att.iot
Light: nbiot.iot
Plus : nbiot.iot

Any hints ?

Thanks,

Filip.

@peterv said in Orange Belgium Gpy:

6400

[Filip]

This post is deleted!

[Filip]

OK, it does work for Orange Belgium using the instructions @peterv provided (thx for posting them), but ONLY using NB-IOT firmware NB1-37781, not using the more recent NB1-38729.

Cheers,

Filip.

[Lonefish]

@peterv Do you have any news on newer firmware? With your code it started to work at some point on firmware 40343 without any changes that I know of. 2 days later, not changing anything, it stopped working..

[mp]

@lonefish said in Orange Belgium Gpy:

40343

I will test once i success in flash the nb firmware.
By the way, I heard that LTE catM is being deployed on Orange

[rskoniec]

@mp Here in Poland Orange also deploying pilots with Cat-M1.

[mp]

My flash succeed!

In the first test device attache and connect quite quickly ( with csq = 16), but now with the same code it didn't work again (csq = 99,99). Strange, will test again later

[mp]

@Lonefish Do you find a solution?

Anyone else have some track to debug when the code is stuck in the isattached loop?

Or have the 35351 firmware?

[Lonefish]

@mp Apparently the SIM cards were deactivated, they deactivated the SIM cards after 3 months, and we didn't know. They are activated again and now it works again (firmware 40343)

I also heard the news that CAT M1 should be deployed, will test that out later this week.

[Lonefish]

The current state (22 Januari) of the Orange LTE-CAT M1 is this according to Orange B2B:
Only in Antwerp and around 20 sites it's available. The network is ready, but still waiting to activate it because of a few reasons apparently.

[mp]

Hey,
I still have trouble to connect to nbiot :s
Always stuck in lte.isattached loop.

I checked my sim card with the allthinktalks modem and the card is still activated.
I've tried the solution of peterv, annoguy, and in the official doc.
@Lonefish which solution did you tried ?

[mp]

Does anyone can help to figure out what going on ?
It start to be frustrating ....