New LTE band support, available from distributors?

[reidfo]

Re: Important News regarding Cat-M1 and NB-IoT Cellular range

I know from the above thread that development boards purchased from the Pycom shop have the updated LTE bands, but what about boards purchased from distributors? I typically purchase from Mouser in the US. Since the boards (GPy in my case) with the updated bands have the same revision number, how do we know if we're purchasing the updated version?

[robert-hh]

@reidfo Just try to attach to one of the new bands, like band=8. If you get an immediate error message, then it's an non-updated board.

[tuftec]

Although trying to attach using band 8 will will highlight whether or not a module has been upgraded, it does little to help unsuspecting clients that end up purchasing old stock. The usual way for manufacturers to handle these sorts of recall issues is to mark the upgraded product in some way so that it is easy to identify. A simple mod stick might be effective.

[robert-hh]

@tuftec I agree. But that is a constant problem not only with Pycom, that variants of products are sold under the same name. As far as it is related to software, this is less of a problem, more the usual case. Hardware is not changeable.

[tvetter1976]

Is it possible to check Band 8 support without a sim card? I do not have nb-iot at the moment, but I as soon as I have them, I would like to start my project and not waste time sending back devices.

[reidfo]

@robert-hh Looks like maybe another documentation issue. I am able to attach on band 8, though all other bands listed as "new" throw an error as expected on a non-upgraded board. @Paul-Thornton how do we know when ordering new development boards from distributors if they have support for all bands?

[robert-hh]

@reidfo my hint may have been wrong. I remember that I could call attach() with band=8, not getting any error, but it simply did not attach. So maybe Paul knows how to get that information from the modem.