Sentrius MG100 + BT510 Starter Kit

To reliably transfer files, your python app cannot be in a loop or printing any messages. Follow the steps provided below to ensure reliable file transfers.

1. Open the UART and issue Ctrl+C.
2. You should now have a REPL prompt.
3. Open the UART with Xbit VS Code.
4. Rename main.py to something else and reboot.
5. Now you can transfer files.
6. Important Note: To have a reliable file transfer experience, reduce the print messages in your python app, the file transfer is over this UART so cross talk must be eliminated.

If you would like verbose output from the modem, change the bool on this function to "true":

https://github.com/LairdCP/canvas_python_samples/blob/1091ec7286a1aa5de521c62f0c5cba00cb74cb42/modules/networking/net_helper.py#L74

The APN is set in your main.py script.  The script linked below is the minimum modem configuration:

https://github.com/LairdCP/canvas_python_samples/blob/main/networking/modem/modem_minimal.py

This function call is for setting the APN:

https://lairdcp.github.io/canvas_python_docs/canvas_net.html#canvas_net.Modem.set_apn

Many functions of mcumgr will not work with WSL or GitBash.  Serial communication isn't fully vetted with these terminal emulators.  When using Windows, it's best to use mcumgr in the "command prompt" app.  

Below is a link to the manifest:

Manifest

The low power sample manifest can be used to evaluate low_power modes of the Pinnacle 100:

Sample Manifest.

The attribute "mqtt_watchdog" should be set to a value appropriate to your use case. If no MQTT activity is detected for that value, then the device will reset. A value of 0 disables the watchdog feature.

The firmware is licensed that it must run on Ezurio hardware.

Follow this link for more details:  License

With the Legacy BT510 firmware, when the Temperature Sense Interval is set to 0, with the Sentrius BT510 App, the temperature measurements are stopped, although there will be 1 one more measurement when the value is changed.

When the Battery Sense Interval is set to 0, with the Sentrius BT510 App, battery measurements are stopped. Note there is a power fail circuit built into the device that constantly monitors the battery level. Even if the Battery Sense Interval is set to 0, and the battery level drops below the failure level, a battery fail event will still be advertised.

Root CA and public device cert keys:

/lfs1/tel/trust/ca.crt

/lfs1/tel/trust/cert.crt

Private/public key:

/lfs1/enc/tel/key/private.key

/lfs1/enc/tel/key/public.key

The TLS handshake is handled by the stack in the nrf52820, not the HL7800.

To update the modem firmware, follow the steps in this document:

Updating HL7800 Firmware Via UART

Firmware can be downloaded directly from Sierra Wireless.

https://source.sierrawireless.com/resources/airprime/software/hl7800-firmware/hl78xx-firmware/

After you select the updated firmware version, download the XMODEM package. Firmware updates are diff updates. The XMODEM package has the diff files used to load into the MG100 and update the HL7800. You need to know what version you are currently running and then you can select the file that goes from the current firmware to the new one.

If you would like to clean your Zephyr build use the "-p" switch for pristine, or when all else fails delete the build directory.  

If you would like to launch "menuconfig" for your Zephyr build, add "-t menuconfig" to the end of your build command.  

For example:

west build -p -b mg100 -d ble_gateway_dm_firmware/build/mg100 ble_gateway_dm_firmware -- -DAPP_TYPE=mqtt -t menuconfig

For more information:

Interactive Kconfig interfaces — Zephyr Project Documentation

If you would like to see the Modem's signal strength it can be viewed using the "attr get lte_rsrp" command.

There's a Zephyr RTOS Discord channel.  This is a great place to ask questions and have them answered by the engineers who wrote the software.  There's even a channel for HL7800!

Project Zephyr Discord

These instructions are intended for Linux or Macintosh OS. They may work using WSL, Cigwin, or other bash style terminals in Windows although this is untested. 

It may be desired to communicate with a device attached to the USB-SWD without terminal emulation, I.E. Picocom, Screen, Putty.  This can be useful for writing bash scripts, or if you're using Zephyr's "west flash" and would like a quick way to check your output. 

1. Verify you have the program "stty" available using the command "which stty", if this does not return a value you will need to install it.  Fortunately "stty" generally comes standard with Linux and MacOS.  
2. Identify your serial device.  This can be done using the command "dmesg -w" then connecting the USB-SWD.  You will see output like this (In Linux).

3. (Optional) Assign the device name to a variable, for example "DEVICE=/dev/ttyACM0".
4. Configure "stty" to talk with the device "stty -F $DEVICE 115200 -echo -echoe -echok"
5. To see output from the device execute "cat $DEVICE &".  This will send serial communication from the device to Linux's standard output.  The "&" is to run this program in the background.
6. Now press the reset button on the USB-SWD, you should see the output from your device.  In this example the Zephyr "Hello World" example has been flashed to a BT510. 

7. (Optional) if you would like to send commands back to the device you can use "echo" or add an argument to your shell, "foo() { echo -n -e "$1\r" > $DEVICE; }".  Now commands can be issued directly from the command line, for example "foo "my_command"" will send the string "my_command" to the device. 

Technically any magnet with sufficient field strength and proper field orientation can be used.
The magnet sensor used in the BT510 is a magnetoresistive sensor and hence the sensitive axis is in the sensor plane (other than for hall sensors where the sensitive axis is perpendicular to the sensor plane). Below picture indicates the sensitive axis. The sensor is NOT sensitive to the direction of the field!



More information about sensitivity and orientation recommendations from the sensor chip perspective is in the SM351LT data sheet. The below picture summarizes the most important aspects. It also shows the orientation of the sensor chip relative to the BT510 enclosure. The magnet coming with the BT510 is a rod-style magnet with axial magnetization and hence the field lines go from the short sides (top/bottom) of the magnet (more or less parallel) along the long sides of the magnet like indicated in the “magnet movement” section of the picture. This orientation ensures the field lines penetrating the sensor chip mainly along its sensitive axis. One can also see that rotating the magnet by 90° would lead to the field lines penetrating the sensor chip perpendicular to the sensitive axis and hence not generate any signal.



When selecting a different magnet than the standard BT510 magnet both field strength and orientation needs to be taken into account. A magnet with higher field strength can cover a larger operating distance to trigger the magnet switch. 

There exist a lot of standard round magnets on the market often used to stick/fix something onto metal surfaces and hence the magnetization is not critical and works for any magnetization type (like axial, vertical, diametrical…). However, often the magnetization type is not even specified for a particular magnet and cheap ones (like used for white boards) sometimes even have several magnetic poles in parallel over the area of the magnet. This actually helps for the common use-case of sticking well to metal surfaces but makes them quite unusable for reliably and reproducibly triggering a sensor chip.

How to best orientate your round magnet to get stable sensor near/far readings would depend on how the magnet is being magnetized and how the magnetic field lines would penetrate the sensor chip when applied. If the magnetization is unknown a magnetic field viewer (aka flux detector/viewer) can be used to "see" the magnetic poles and get the orientation of field lines.
 
The general advice would be to either use a rod-style magnet with axial magnetization in the above shown orientation or a round magnet with known magnetization type and then positioned in a way so that the field lines penetrate the sensor in its most sensitive axis. To ensure this, the magnetization of the magnet must be known before mounting.

Laird customers get instant access to Memfault's device observability platform for up to 100 devices free forever. To get started with Memfault for remote debugging, continuous monitoring, and OTA firmware updates, sign up here.

• Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide
• With additional integration and configuration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird connected device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

You can use Memfault to remotely monitor the health of their devices and debug issues in both the Pinnacle 100 and MG100 Gateway designs. Laird customers get instant access to Memfault for up to 100 devices free forever.

• Sign up here and follow the steps on the Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide to get started with Memfault.
• With additional integration and configuration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird embedded device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

For analyzing overall performance patterns in your fleet, metrics can easily be collected using our Memfault integration with the Pinnacle 100 and Sentrius MG100. Laird customers get instant access to Memfault for up to 100 devices free forever. 

• Sign up here and follow the steps on the Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide to get started with Memfault.
• With additional integration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird embedded device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.

Everything needed to get started with our Out of the Box Demos for the Pinnacle 100 cellular modem and the MG100 cellular gateway can be found on GitHub

A demo video for the Pinnacle 100 is also linked on the Product page for additional reference.

You do not need to build the OOB Demo on your own, if you have need to upgrade your OOB Demo version on your Pinnacle 100 modem or MG100 gateway, please use our official releases found here: https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle-100-Firmware/releases.

Found at this link are several firmware file types depending on how you plan to upgrade, *.hex is for SWD while *.bin is used for BLE, UART, and HTTP over LTE. Additionally, 480-00052 is for the Pinnacle 100 and 480-00070 is for the MG100.

See the Firmware Updates section for how to upgrade over the different interfaces, BLE/UART/HTTP over LTE

To upgrade over SWD, use the JLINK USB port on the Pinnacle 100 DVK board, for the MG100 see the MG100 Hardware Guide section 5.4.4 to learn how to connect a J-Link debugger to the board for the upgrade using nRF Connect or Nordic Command Line Tools.

On Windows 10 when building firmware such as oob_demo firmware I am getting the following error: ninja: error: FindFirstFileExA(c/:/oob_demo/oob_demo/src): The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect can you help me to correct this?

The ninja: error: FindFirstFileExA(c/:/oob_demo/oob_demo/src): The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect, may be thrown if you have previously set up a Zephyr environment. This indicates ninja needs to be upgraded. If west update did not update ninja to the latest version enter choco upgrade ninja --force in cmd.exe as administrator to force the upgrade:

C:\Windows\system32>choco upgrade ninja --force

Yes, the BT510 Sentrius™ BT510 sensor is replaceable by removing the rear battery door cover.

The battery is a 3-volt lithium of CR2477 type.

The battery door cover has a gasket inside to keep out liquids.

The Sentrius™ BT510 sensors range is dependent on a number of factors some of which are under user control.
You can configure a sensor using a Bluetooth connection and the Laird virtual serial port(vSP) service. The protocol sent over the virtual serial port is JSON-RPC version 2.This allows you to add new commands and features without changing the Bluetooth interface.
This includes being able to configure

• Tx power
• LE Coded (Long Range) PHY

More details are available via the BT510 user guide.

It is also possible to extend the range of the BT510 using the Laird BL654 Repeater/gateway smartbasic programs this allows the Laird BL654 module to function as a repeater or gateway for adverts from Laird’s BT510 sensors. It can also operate in AT mode where it can advertise, scan, connect, and offer GATT client and server capabilities. This application is controlled with the industry standard AT command protocol over a UART interface.

• BT510 Repeater Mode–The module listens for adverts from Laird’s BT510 sensors or other BT510 repeaters and rebroadcasts over the air so that a range extension can be facilitated. All other adverts are ignored.
• BT10 Gateway Mode–The module listens for adverts from Laird’s BT510 orBT510 Repeaters and sends them out in hex format over the UART interface so that a host can process them. It could forward to the cloud if it has the appropriate connectivity. All other adverts are ignored.
• Generic BLE Client/Server Mode–The module can be made to advertise, scan, connect, and pair. In addition, it can enable the creation of a GATT server table on-the-fly and, conversely can be a GATT client to interact with remote GATT servers.

More details are available via the BT510 Repeater/Gateway user guide.
The source code for all of these applications is hosted on our GitHub page:

The Sentrius™ BT510 advertises events. An event can be a temperature measurement, an alarm ,a battery measurement, a button press, a door opening/closing, or movement. The configuration of a sensor determines what kind of events it generates.

Access to accelerometer values is not possible but it is possible to configure the accelerometer sensitivity. You can configure a sensor using a Bluetooth connection and the Laird virtual serial port (VSP) service. The protocol sent over the virtual serial port is JSON-RPC version 2. This allows you to add new commands and features without changing the Bluetooth interface. The BT510 accelerometer creates a movement event.
More details can be found in the BT510 user guide.

Yes!

You can configure a sensor using a Bluetooth connection and the Laird virtual serial port(vSP) service. The protocol sent over the virtual serial port is JSON-RPC version 2. This allows you to add new commands and features without changing the Bluetooth interface.

This includes being able to change the PHY to LE coded for long range applications.
The Laird BT510 smartphone applications allows a user to select LE Coded PHY.
LE Coded PHY can also be selected from your own smartphone application using JSON over VSP BLE connections.
Details can be found in the BT510 user guide

Out of the box the BT510 is configured via a smartphone app but this does not allow a developer to reprogram the BT510. However the BT510 can be programmed by a developer using Zephyr in C. More details can be found at the following link.

The Zephyr OS is based on a small-footprint kernel designed for use on resource-constrained and embedded systems: from simple embedded environmental sensors and LED wearables to sophisticated embedded controllers, smart watches, and IoT wireless applications.

The BT510 sensor is configured using a smartphone via BLE out of the box. It is also possible for a developer to load their own C code onto the BT510 via a programming cable.

The BT510 board does not have an on-board J-Link debug IC as some nRF5x development boards, however, instructions from the Nordic nRF5x Segger J-Link; page also apply to this board, with the additional step of connecting an external debugger.

Ezurio will provide the USB-SWD programming board that supports this connector layout, refer to the USB SWD Programmer product page

We suggest using Visual Studio Code, please see the following for more information: https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle_100_oob_demo/blob/master/docs/development.md

• We suggest using Memfault for an out-of-the-box fault debugging and device observability solution. Memfault integrates seamlessly with Zephyr on the Pinnacle 100 and Sentrius MG100. Laird customers get instant access to Memfault for up to 100 devices free forever.
  • Sign up here and follow the steps on the Pinnacle 100 Modem Memfault Integration Guide to get started with Memfault.
  • With additional integration and configuration, Memfault can also be used with any Laird embedded device, contact your FAE or Memfault for more information.