Cellular Modem for Beaglebone Wireless?

buzmeg · August 5, 2021, 11:41pm

Hi, folks,

What’s the best way to get cellular connectivity on a BeagleBone Wireless Black/Green/Blue/Magenta/etc nowadays?

All the capes seem pretty outdated, and cellular modems are probably going to bang the USB power system pretty hard.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

jcdammeyer · August 6, 2021, 12:02am

I’ve used the CLICK modules.

https://www.mikroe.com/beaglebone-mikrobus-cape

Then chose W Click Boards from the menu and under Wireless Connectivity there are all sorts of options.

RobertCNelson · August 6, 2021, 6:53pm

Take a look at Nimbelink:

Regards,

buzmeg · August 6, 2021, 10:39pm

NB-IoT is sadly not in scope because the carriers still have full cranio-rectal impaction.

I have had several cases where fleets of NB-IoT devices simply went dead because the carrier did an upgrade. If you don’t have a way to do out of band firmware upgrades, the carriers will hose you at some point.

That’s why I’m looking for a bog-standard cellular modem that uses the same infrastructure as normal phones.

cbrake · August 7, 2021, 4:28pm

I think you can buy the adapter and modem separate from Nimbelink, so you can then use whatever modem (LTE Cat4, etc) you want.

https://www.digikey.be/product-detail/en/nimbelink-llc/NL-AB-BBCL/1477-1049-ND/7101749

I’ve had great experiences with Nimbelink. If you are in the US, their modems are end-device certified on Verizon and other networks. Currently using the Nimbelink Quectel Cat-M BG96 module on Verizon. I think the BG96 is no longer available, so they recommend the BG95 version as a replacement.

The BG96 has performed very well, is reliable, and seems to work well on VZ networks. I’ve not run into any issues that required modem FW upgrades like I did with the u-blox Cat-M modem.

I’ve also been working on modem management software:

github.com

simpleiot/simpleiot/blob/master/network/modem.go

package network

// this module currently supports the BG96 modem connected via USB

import (
	"errors"
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"log"
	"os/exec"
	"strings"
	"time"

	nmea "github.com/adrianmo/go-nmea"
	"github.com/jacobsa/go-serial/serial"
	"github.com/simpleiot/simpleiot/data"
	"github.com/simpleiot/simpleiot/file"
	"github.com/simpleiot/simpleiot/respreader"
)

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(currently BG96, but should be adaptable to other modems)

This is used on several projects and will be integrated into the simpleiot binary releases soon.