The big Pyra modem thread

[Bosbeetle]

I think it is about time for the big pyra modem thread.

Ive just received a prepaid mobile internet SIM card and am starting to play around with the modem. In short It doesn't work yet for me.

So what have I done somewhere in between getting my pyra and my SIM card I turned of the checkmark at "enable Mobile Broadband" the nice thing is then not only the checkmark is turned of but the complete option dissapears to turn it on again.
But kindly a forum member pointed me to the command line version of modem manager and doing ' nmcli radio wwan on ' turns it back on.

Then you kindly get to kind of first run wizard after putting in your SIM code. And there you can select your provider and type of prescription (its fun to find which prescription you have or what apn your provider uses Im still not sure).
Anyway after you could theoretically get connected if it werent for the fact that I dont see any connection option and it just sticks at scanning.

Next up I tried to look into some stuff mmcli provides, doing "mmcli -L" gives a list of modems and it shows one a [Cinterion] PLS8-E
then doing mmcli -m 0 give you the status of modem number 0

it gives ports ttyACM1 (at), ttyACM2 (gps)
It gives state: searching , signal quality 0%
and also 3GPP registration : searching.

So I guess it cant find a singal and therfor not get connected to a mobile tower.

Post automatically merged: Jun 30, 2021

Anybody any idea where to proceed next.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Okay already one more succesfull thing, I went outside and got a connection, so it is to weak to pick up a signal at my home.

Did not get enough to see if internet worked but it's a start. (couldnt test longer because it started to rain)

 

[TeDaDeS]

How does it compare to the reception on your cellphone?

 

[Bosbeetle]

How does it compare to the reception on your cellphone?

When I went outside my cellphone was also crap except for one spot, the spot where my cellphone occasionally got 4 bars (on/off) the pyra connected. In my home I have one bar on my phone but no conncetion to the pyra. Hope to test in a place with better reception soon. Also only got a H connection on the pyra.

 

[levi]

In my experience of using dumb phones, providers these days generally send you a text message containing your AP settings once you first connect. Who knows, when we figure out how to read text messages, perhaps that will be there waiting for you.

I would assume an H connection is 3G+HSDPA (I think 3G+HSPA+ is H+). That should be good enough to read sites like these boards, but I can't say what the rest of the wide web world out there would be like these days on such a connection.

 

[fritata]

I have yet to get a successful modem connection (only tested indoors), although I never saw the first run wizard so idk if thats part of the problem

 

[Bosbeetle]

I have yet to get a successful modem connection (only tested indoors), although I never saw the first run wizard so idk if thats part of the problem

I mean the thing you get after you put in your SIM code, it asks for your provider and the plan you use. Basically just sets an apn.

You can also get that last part again by editting your connections. (where you can also edit wifi connections)

 

[elw3]

But kindly a forum member pointed me to the command line version of modem manager and doing ' nmcli radio wwan on ' turns it back on.

Not that it matters, but the actual command is still rfkill. It will matter if one kills network manager tho.

It gives state: searching , signal quality 0%

Same here.

You should use the tool "modem manager gui" it will give you access to advanced status information, sms, gps and towers.

In my experience of using dumb phones, providers these days generally send you a text message containing your AP settings once you first connect. Who knows, when we figure out how to read text messages, perhaps that will be there waiting for you.

Your phone transmits a serial number and providers actually look this up and send you information based on the device and what that serial number was last used for. So they likely will do nothing with a pyra.

I would assume an H connection is 3G+HSDPA (I think 3G+HSPA+ is H+). That should be good enough to read sites like these boards, but I can't say what the rest of the wide web world out there would be like these days on such a connection.

_such_ connection is fast enough to get video streams bigger than our screen without any kind of buffering, i can assure you that, its too fast for anything. But you will hit your traffic limit within 5 minutes anyway.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Well I will try later today but it feels a bit weird standing on the sidewalk fiddeling with my pyra I did get a connection for a while but not long enough to do any testing on it. Hope it wont rain tonight so I can give a bit more info.

 

[aTc]

Of course everything always worked fine for me, other than the signal strength not beeing optimal.

If the sim card has a pin, it should pop up a window asking for it just after you logged in.
After that modemmanager can be used to take care of everything else.

Using networkmanager to try and get the connection going never worked properly, and needed much more manual setup.

I usually only test sending an sms with it, but data should work too. I managed to go through my 1gb prepaid data in a few seconds when trying it.

Another thing to take care of is that the sim should be inserted properly, while you can push a nano sim in there, that's not what it wants :

 

[Bosbeetle]

first mobile post

Post automatically merged: Jul 1, 2021

also got my first to welcome texts

 

[Bosbeetle]

highest signal ive seen is 40% now these are all mobile osts from the pyra

 

[Bosbeetle]

registration seems to be stuck at 'not registered' and mode at 'unknown' I also only get H but that might be not having the correct apn and stuff for this prepaid card. I only get the default plan working not 4G or others. h'ave been connected for about 1,5 km of my 7km walk now if you see somebody walking in rotterdam while typing on a pyra it is me

 

[Bosbeetle]

session time 23 minutes and counting

Post automatically merged: Jul 1, 2021

 

[elw3]

Dont trust the statistics of that tool too much. Just a second ago i had an upload of 1.02e+03 kb and my season timer is pretty much randomized. Plus a claim of having 1.6TB of total transfer with a plan that allows 1Gb per month.
Can you show whats on you info page there too?

Post automatically merged: Jul 1, 2021

Eh scrap that, dont publish your phone number...

 

[Bosbeetle]

Dont trust the statistics of that tool too much. Just a second ago i had an upload of 1.02e+03 kb and my season timer is pretty much randomized. Plus a claim of having 1.6TB of total transfer with a plan that allows 1Gb per month.
Can you show whats on you info page there too?

Post automatically merged: Jul 1, 2021

Eh scrap that, dont publish your phone number...

hehe I was going to say: No!

managed to get 1 continues session while walking 4km, lost reception close to my house and didnt get it back. It is very picky when it comes to reception. Still didnt seem to get 4G but also have to check better what my prepaid card supports and what the actual settings should be. But I can confirm the modem is working.

 

[elw3]

Okey now that we verified for sure that this actually works as it should, this was questionable the entire time, we can go on and research why the antenna has such a bad reception.
There is a couple of AT commands to adjust the antenna, none of it had any effect for me, maybe you have more luck with that.
@ouzle Did some work on that here https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/tidied-and-more-descriptive-wwan-status-script.99406/ which is a good start.
What i did already was checking all options for powersaving and limiting radio power, on mine these where disabled per default, but you better check this too.
Thats as far as i researched the matter. I yet need to make the same test as you and go to the next tower, but i dont even know where to find one.

 

[Inqui]

hey, finally you guys brought me back to test my modem.
long time ago I tried already and wasn´t able to even see the usb device and thought my modem is broken.

Now I was able to setup my Datacard and test it.
Strange but Modem Manager GUI wont let me create a profile that connect, maybe cause it always set a password, even when I left it emtpy.
As Vodafone Germany just need the APN, no user, pw or network-id the GUI always failed.
command line worked out on that:
nmcli c add type gsm ifname ttyACM1 con-name testverbindung apn web.vodafone.de
nmcli c up testverbindung

here´s my printout from the first test with signal full strength:

mmcli -m 0
--------------------------------
General | dbus path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0
| device id: 4154586c77773ce7f17XXXXXXXXXXa65c
--------------------------------
Hardware | manufacturer: Cinterion
| model: PLS8-E
| revision: REVISION 02.011
| supported: gsm-umts, lte
| current: gsm-umts, lte
| equipment id: 35870XXXXXXXX99
--------------------------------
System | device: /sys/devices/platform/44000000.ocp/4a000000.interconnect/4a000000.interconnect:segment@0/4a064000.target-module/4a064000.usbhshost/4a064c00.ehci/usb1/1-2/1-2.3
| drivers: cdc_acm, cdc_ether
| plugin: Cinterion
| primary port: ttyACM1
| ports: wwan0 (net), wwan1 (net), ttyACM1 (at), ttyACM2 (gps)
--------------------------------
Status | unlock retries: sim-pin (3), sim-pin2 (3), sim-puk (10), sim-puk2 (10)
| state: connected
| power state: on
| access tech: lte
| signal quality: 100% (recent)
--------------------------------
Modes | supported: allowed: 2g; preferred: none
| allowed: 3g; preferred: none
| allowed: 4g; preferred: none
| allowed: 2g, 3g, 4g; preferred: none
| current: allowed: any; preferred: none
--------------------------------
Bands | supported: egsm, dcs, utran-1, utran-3, utran-8, eutran-1, eutran-3,
| eutran-7, eutran-8, eutran-20
| current: egsm, dcs, utran-1, utran-3, utran-8, eutran-1, eutran-3,
| eutran-7, eutran-8, eutran-20
--------------------------------
IP | supported: ipv4, ipv6, ipv4v6
--------------------------------
3GPP | imei: 3587090XXXXXXXX9
| operator id: 26202
| operator name: vodafone.de
| registration: home
--------------------------------
3GPP EPS | ue mode of operation: csps-1
--------------------------------
SIM | dbus path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SIM/0
--------------------------------
Bearer | dbus path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Bearer/3
| /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Bearer/0

so overall I´m very happy that this is fixed and working for me.

Edit:
sending and receiving SMS workes as well.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Ah yes now I see it it always sets gprs as password even if you leave it empty now i can test an empty one as wel via commandline.

So this is a nice way to add a connection and keep the password out. The only one that worked for me was the default one that uses a username and password. The other plans are without password and they didnt work.

 

[Phlyra]

hey, finally you guys brought me back to test my modem.
long time ago I tried already and wasn´t able to even see the usb device and thought my modem is broken.

Now I was able to setup my Datacard and test it.
Strange but Modem Manager GUI wont let me create a profile that connect, maybe cause it always set a password, even when I left it emtpy.
As Vodafone Germany just need the APN, no user, pw or network-id the GUI always failed.
command line worked out on that:
nmcli c add type gsm ifname ttyACM1 con-name testverbindung apn web.vodafone.de
nmcli c up testverbindung

here´s my printout from the first test with signal full strength:


View attachment 37302

so overall I´m very happy that this is fixed and working for me.

Edit:
sending and receiving SMS workes as well.

Wait you get max 1.28Mbps upload speed?!

Post automatically merged: Jul 1, 2021

For those chewing through their monthly data allowance like crazy, it might* be worth checking out Hak5’s mangle trick?

*N.b. I’m not encouraging *anything* here...