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AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA-R5 Starter Kit - Getting started 

UBX-21042016 - R02 

Troubleshooting

 

Page 17 of 20 

C1-Public  

 

7

 

Troubleshooting 

Problem 

Action 

No lights come on. 

Ensure power is supplied to the board, e.g., via the USB-C connector. 

No welcome message is displayed when an 
AT terminal application is attached to the 
board. 

Check that the white LED marked “O

n

” is 

illuminated; the cellular module does 

NOT come on automatically when the board is powered, you must press the 

SARA O

n”

 button for around one second to power the module on. 

Also make sure that the baud rate of your terminal application is set to 115200. 

I don’t see anything in the terminal 

application when I type in it. 

The AWS IoT ExpressLink specification does not include echoing of received 

characters, which is normal for a “machine”

-oriented interface; when typing in 

commands manually, please 

set “local echo” on in your terminal application

 so 

that you can see what you’re doing

I can’t use backspace or delete or the cursor 

keys to edit my AT commands when typing 
in the terminal application. 

The AWS IoT ExpressLink specification does not support use of editing keys; it 
is meant to be used by a microcontroller, another machine, which would have no 
use for editing keys. If you find this irritating when typing in commands 
manually, then you should find a terminal application that holds the entire 
command string locally, in the application, allowing you to edit it, and only sends 
the command string once <return> is pressed. 

No response is received to any AT 
commands typed in the terminal 
application. 

Make sure that the baud rate of your terminal application is set to 115200 and 
that AT commands are formed exactly as defined in the 

AWS IoT ExpressLink 

programmers manual

the line ending must be line feed (0x0a); carriage return 

(0x0d) and carriage return followed by line feed (0x0d 0a) cannot be used. 

The AT command

 CONNECT

 does not work.  Make sure that the supplied SIM card is inserted in the board, an antenna is 

connected to the antenna socke

t on the board (the one marked “LTE”, 

not the 

GNSS one) and that you are withi

range of a cellular network that provides 

LTE-M coverage

Make sure that you have followed the registration procedure of section 5, 
including registering your device in your AWS account; the connection is to the 
endpoint of the device in that account (not just the cellular network) and so it 
cannot succeed until all of the registration steps have been completed. 
If 

CONNECT

 has worked in the past but is now failing in the same location and 

after using the device for some while, it may be that the cellular network has 

decided to refuse service for a “guard time” (e.g. 1

 hour) because the device has 

connected and disconnected [again] more than a handful of times in quick 
succession; unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about this (other 
than avoiding many 

connections/disconnections), it is a network “feature”.

 

The AT command 

SEND

 returns 

OK

 even 

when I have disconnected the cellular 
antenna and so I am plainly not in coverage. 

Messages are queued until it is possible to send them; if you reconnect the 
cellular antenna, you should find that the messages will be successfully 
published. If you do not do so, or you disconnect or reset the device, the queued 
messages will be lost. 

Setting a topic with the AT command

 CONF 

TopicX

 (where 

X

 is 1 to 16) returns an error. 

While a topic is subscribed-to it cannot be modified; please use the AT command 

UNSUBSCRIBEX

 to unsubscribe from topic 

X

 before modifying it. 

The AT commands

 CONFMODE

OTA

HOTA

 and 

WHERE

 do not work. 

These AT commands are not supported in this preview release. 

Some parameters to the 

CONF

 command do 

not work. 

Only parameters that are relevant to a cellular device, and are not required only 
by OTA or HOTA, are supported; see section 8 for a full list. 

Issuing the 

SLEEP

 AT command does not 

reduce the power consumption of the board. 

In this preview release the 

SLEEP

 command is accepted for compatibility 

purposes but does not actually put any hardware into a low power state. 

The AT command 

TIME?

 does not work. 

You must be connected to the cellular network to obtain the time. If the problem 
happens when you 

are connected, then the cellular network you are using does 

not support reporting of time to the mobile terminal (the feature is optional in 
the network). 

Some downlink messages from the server 
are going missing. 

Make sure that no downlink message exceeds 2048 bytes in size; in this release 
any downlink message larger than 2048 bytes in size will be silently discarded. 

Messages larger than around 512 bytes in 
size cannot be sent. 

The maximum AT command length in this release is 512 bytes and hence this 
limits the maximum length of MQTT message that can be sent. 

Summary of Contents for AWS ExpressLink SARA-R5

Page 1: ...ter Kit which consists of a u blox AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA R5 module mounted on a SparkFun carrier board such that it can be used with a variety of microcontrollers or an attached PC The u blox AWS I...

Page 2: ...or third parties may hold intellectual property rights in the products names logos and designs included in this document Copying reproduction modification or disclosure to third parties of this docum...

Page 3: ...p your AWS account and permissions for IoT development 6 5 Registering AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA R5 with your development account 7 5 1 Setting up the module 7 5 2 Registering with your AWS account 8 5...

Page 4: ...rences the SARA R5 module mounted on the board is a SARA R510S not a SARA R510M8S and hence the board a does NOT include GNSS functionality and so is not provided with a GNSS antenna and b does NOT po...

Page 5: ...the M 2 socket on the board allowing you to experiment with driving the module from a microcontroller please refer to the ESP32 documentation for how to develop software using the ESP32 chip 2 3 User...

Page 6: ...e feed For a quick check turn the cellular module on by pressing the SARA On button on the carrier board for around one second Your terminal window should show the welcome message Welcome to u blox AW...

Page 7: ...eam SIM is inserted in the board a cellular antenna is connected to the antenna connector marked LTE you are in range of a cellular network that supports LTE M the board is connected to a host machine...

Page 8: ...e does not yet know the radio environment and must search all of the global LTE M RF bands on each visible cellular network Connections should be quicker on subsequent attempts as the module will reme...

Page 9: ...R5 module still switched on In the terminal application type the command AT CONF ThingName and press return The configuration parameter name ThingName is case sensitive 4 Copy the sequence of numeric...

Page 10: ...s return You must use the name Certificate and NOT the more recently introduced Certificate pem which is not supported necessary in this release 6 Copy the returned string including BEGIN CERTIFICATE...

Page 11: ...AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA R5 with your development account Page 11 of 20 C1 Public 8 Under Certificate select Choose file and upload the file ThingName cert pem from step 6 9 Under Certificate status...

Page 12: ...ext below Version 2012 10 17 Statement Effect Allow Action Resource then click Create to create the policy Note the examples in this document are intended only for development environments All devices...

Page 13: ...ONNECT once more and press return After a short while you should receive the response OK 1 CONNECTED Congratulations You have successfully connected to your AWS cloud account 16 To close the connectio...

Page 14: ...pic filter and then click Subscribe 6 1 Connecting With the u blox AWS IoT ExpressLink SARA R5 module switched on in the terminal application establish a secure connection by typing the command AT CON...

Page 15: ...ceiving data and commands from the AWS cloud To receive messages on your device in the terminal application type the command AT CONF Topic1 MyTopic and press return You should receive the response OK...

Page 16: ...instance if you typed the command AT CONF Topic2 MyTopic i e leaving off the leading and pressed return then subscribed to that topic by typing the command AT SUBSCRIBE2 and pressing return then in th...

Page 17: ...account the connection is to the endpoint of the device in that account not just the cellular network and so it cannot succeed until all of the registration steps have been completed If CONNECT has wo...

Page 18: ...n emergency restart of the module will be performed On the SparkFun MicroMod Asset Tracker board a SARA On button is provided which will assert the PWR_ON pin while pressed The PWR_ON pin is a toggle...

Page 19: ...l 4 AWS IoT ExpressLink example code 5 u blox SARA R5 series data sheet UBX 19016638 6 u blox SARA R5 series system integration manual UBX 19041356 7 ESP32 development guide For product change notific...

Page 20: ...t_ap u blox com Regional Office China Beijing Phone 86 10 68 133 545 Email info_cn u blox com Support support_cn u blox com Regional Office China Chongqing Phone 86 23 6815 1588 Email info_cn u blox c...

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