Cannot connect to internet for clock sync with NIST

Did you activate the SIM card with Hologram?  If the orange RSSI LED light isn’t coming on, then you aren’t getting any cell reception.  Once you do get cell reception, the orange LED will come on (and its brightness is indicative of the strength of the signal).  And a few seconds after the orange light comes on, the blue light will start blinking, which shows that you’ve successfully joined the network.  The problem we’re having with several of the “dead” LTE modules is that seem to lose the ability to join the network (blinking blue LED) after a few weeks or months in use.   None of them have the issue of no orange LED.  I’ve only seen instances of no orange LED when there was no antenna attached, the antenna had a bad (loose) connector, and using the module where there was no AT&T or Verizon LTE signal.  Have you tried communicating directly with the Xbee LTE module using X-CTU to verify any of its settings or updating its firmware?

What kind of carrier board or adapter board are you using between your PC and the Xbee LTE module?

No active bootloader is… bad.  Are you trying to talk to the XBee3 by way of the Mayfly or do you have a separate adapter board (like the Digi development board or a UartSBee or something similar)?  It’s not impossible to use the Mayfly as a carrier board to connect your XBee3 to XCTU, but it won’t work that way “out of the box.”  The LTE adapter board does something different.

If you’re using the LTE adapter board you shouldn’t need SJ13.   That power jumper between the adapter board and the Mayfly doesn’t the same thing.

I don’t think the RSSI light is “on” by default.  It’s one of the “options” for pin 6; the ModularSensors code should tell the XBee3 that that’s the option it wants.  But even when selected I’ve never seen the RSSI light up until *after* you’ve joined the network (and the assoc has gone from solid to “standard single blink.”

We haven’t figured out why we’ve had such a high failure rate with the LTE-M XBee3’s.  It’s pretty discouraging.

I know there was an upload issue with the outputs you tried to post.  (I think our wonderful webmaster is working to allow ino files to be posted.)  But from what you did post, if TinyGSM was able to tell you that the modem was a “u-blox SARA-R410M-02B” it can only have done that if it succeeded in asking the modem for its name.  That means your modem is definitely *not* completely broken and it must have an active bootloader even if XCTU can’t find it.

And what I said above about the assoc/rssi lights only applies if you’re running the XBee3 in “transparent” mode.  You’re running in “bypass.”  The assoc and RSSI lights do not work in bypass mode.  The assoc light will probably never start to blink even after you’re connected and the RSSI light will stay off.

Webmaster chiming in about the uploads issue. It should be possible to upload .ino and .txt files now. Unfortunately, it looks like .ini is not a mime type I can allow to be uploaded to the media library.

@charlesbrown, can you please try to upload your .ino again?

You shouldn’t really need the development board.  If you’re going to use a bunch of the XBee’s I’d say it’s a $70 well spent, but you shouldn’t *need* it.

Nothing looks wrong in your program.  I’m guessing you’re just not connecting to the internet.  What build flags are you running with?  Can you set all of these and post the log from the serial port monitor:

The output might be very long; you’ll probably see a _lot_ of lines that are AT+CEREG? and responses to that.  That’s the Mayfly asking the cellular chip on the XBee3 if it’s registered on the network yet.  If you eventually get a +CEREG=5 (or 1), you’re registered.  If the response is still a 2 or 4 you’re not registered with the network.  If you get as far as being registered and then you’re still not able to post data, that’s a problem with your code or my library.  If you’re never registered, it’s the bee or the sim.

Some things to try if you’re not getting registered:

• Increase the time modem.connectInternet(120000L) up to 10 or 15 minutes (it’s in ms, 120000L = 2 minutes; 600000L = 10 minutes, the “L” tells the compiler it’s a “long” number).  Making the initial connection with a new sim/board/tower may take a really long time.
• Flip back and forth between using “bypass” and “transparent” mode.  See if one works.
• Run a basic program on your Mayfly that just wakes up the bee and leaves it awake.  Let it sit a long while and see if you ever connect.  Something like this should work:
• C++

  #include <Arduino.h> void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); Serial1.begin(9600); pinMode(23, OUTPUT); // make sure the XBee is awake digitalWrite(23, LOW); } void loop() { delay(1000); Serial1.print("+++"); // Enter command mode delay(1000); Serial1.print("ATAI\r"); // Ask if we're connected to the network while (Serial1.available()) { Serial.write(Serial1.read()); } delay(300000L); // wait 5 minutes before asking again }

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  #include <Arduino.h>   void setup() {     Serial.begin(115200);     Serial1.begin(9600);     pinMode(23, OUTPUT);  // make sure the XBee is awake     digitalWrite(23, LOW); }   void loop() {     delay(1000);     Serial1.print("+++");  // Enter command mode     delay(1000);     Serial1.print("ATAI\r");  // Ask if we're connected to the network     while (Serial1.available())     {         Serial.write(Serial1.read());     }     delay(300000L);  // wait 5 minutes before asking again }

  If you eventually get a “0” (zero) response, you’re finally connected.  A “22” or “FF” means it’s searching or the status is unknown.  A “25” means registration has been denied – if you get that, your APN that you set in your other code must have been wrong – I doubt you’ll get this.

@charlesbrown Glad to hear you’ve made progress! We’re always looking for guest bloggers to share their projects and provide tips/tricks/tutorials to help others. Please email me at webmaster@stroudcenter.org if you’re interested.