More Background

[scottbasgaard]

@ftylitak Hey Nikos, this might be completely off-topic and know the wrong place but I'm curious what issues you ran into when you say unstable:

Meanwhile, many LTE CAT M1/NB1 networks operate with IPv6 only, thus making the Pycom device unusable.

We're experiencing a bunch of random issues here in Norway and our FiPy devices over LTE-M and I wonder if this is related. Unfortunately, Pycom is dropping support (EOL) and there hasn't been much help in their forums for so long so looking everywhere I can.

[scottbasgaard]

🤦 unusable, not unstable. Then I get it. Basically this sums up our current status: https://forum.pycom.io/topic/6202/method-to-take-control-of-cell-modem/3?_=1655293433039

[antonisgotsis]

@scottbasgaard Thank you for the question!

Indeed, we have also experienced many issues with FiPys and GPys in the past, but I would say that with the latest hardware and firmware versions we managed to get rather stable operation. The initial versions were really unstable. We don't have LTE-M here, but NB-IoT, but I suspect that this doesn't make much more difference.

What we occasionally observed was modules not able to attach to the network, i.e. AT+CEREG running forever. I also recall frequent reboots, but with latest hw version (i think 1.2r or something like that) most of these issues were resolved. By the way, how do you power your boards? Do you use the expansion boards from Pycom or a breadboard and battery/power supply. This is significant.

P.S. We have abandoned pycom modules for a year now and switched to our own custom board which also runs micropython. The good thing is that we have full control of the modem through AT commands as you suggested in the forum, which gives substantial benefits.