Older is better?

[Richard Johnson]

I am testing with another GPy modem and noticed it has a slightly changed sticker on top and a different response to FW version: (New one - to me)

(Old FW version - my previous unit)

So my new pycom module is WAY more reliable in terms of establishing an LTE connection, holding it while transmitting, and closing / shutting down the connection repeatedly.

Seems like a really old version. Can I back date the FW to my other unit?

The "newer" module CE logo is smaller than the other module I have, weird.

[jcaron]

@Richard-Johnson as I wrote, you don’t know if it’s the firmware or the hardware which is better. If you have both in the same firmware (which you can change), you’ll be able to verify if the difference is due to the firmware (if with the same version they behave the same) or the hardware (if with the same version one is still better then the other).

The issue is that if it turns out to be the firmware which makes the difference, I don’t know if you can revert to the old version.

[Richard Johnson]

@jcaron said in Older is better?:

There’s also the issue of the ESP32 firmware itself (different from that of the modem).

Both of them as seen above have the latest pybyes FW. One has an older version of LTE modem FW and it performs much better. Why would I upgrade it?

[jcaron]

@Richard-Johnson note that there are different hardware versions, with the newer ones being better “calibrated” (whatever that means in actual physical terms), which supposedly helps a lot.

So it’s difficult to say if in your case it’s the hardware or software which makes it better.

There’s also the issue of the ESP32 firmware itself (different from that of the modem).

You could try upgrading the firmware of new one (both modem and ESP32) to a more recent version to see if you still get the better performance, but I’m not sure you would be able to downgrade the modem firmware afterwards if it doesn’t.