Quectel BG95-MX
Set up the Quectel BG95 cellular modem
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Set up the Quectel BG95 cellular modem
Last updated
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The Quectel BG95-M series support LTE Cat M1 technology. The M3 and M5 also come with GSM/EDGE support. This tutorial highlights the Quectel BG95-M3 which supports LTE Cat M1, NB-IoT2 and EGPRS and is compliant with 3GPP release 14.
Monogoto SIM
Connect the Quectel BG95-M3 modem to the EVB kit.
Connect the LTE antenna and (optionally) GPS antenna
Insert the Monogoto SIM
Use the USB to UART converter cable to connect your computer to the COM1 MAIN port of the EVB Kit
Connect to the EVB kit using a terminal program. You can use PuTTY for Windows, or screen, minicom or miniterm for Mac or Linux.
Power the EVB Kit using the USB to micro USB cable and switch the POWER button to ON. The POWER LED will turn on RED.
Press and hold the PWRKEY button for 1 second, the STATUS light will light up on GREEN, the NET_STA LED will start blinking BLUE.
Once the modem has started, it will report:
Enter AT, if the connection with the BG95 modem has been established, the board will answer with OK.
Reset non-volatile memory:
Restore factory settings:
Reboot module:
Set the error reporting to verbose, resulting in more descriptive error messages (optional):
Check the status of the SIM card. The correct response should be: +CPIN: READY
If you receive an error, the SIM may not be inserted properly or the SIM is protected with a PIN. By default, Monogoto SIMs are not PIN protected.
Request the product type, hardware and firmware version:
Request the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity):
Request the ICCID (Integrated Circuit Card ID), which is the identification number of the SIM card
It is possible to let the modem select the network automatically, or to manually define a network to connect with.
To set the modem to automatic network selection enter the command:
Check the network and cellular technology the modem is currently using:
Expected response: +COPS: 0,0,"<name of operator>",X. The last digit indicates the cellular technology:
0 indicates GSM
8 indicates LTE Cat-M1 (also referred to as eMTC)
9 indicates NB-IoT
Start with searching for available networks:
It may take several minutes before the modem responds.
The modem responds with the names and the MCCMNC codes of the available networks. It also shows the cellular technologies the networks support:
To find which of the networks Monogoto has roaming agreements with, review the Coverage lists.
Check the network and cellular technology the modem is currently using:
Expected response: +COPS: 0,0,"<name of operator>",X. The last digit indicates the cellular technology.
Manually set the network and the cellular technology:
Replace XXXXX with the MCCMNC code of your operator, for example"20404" for Vodafone NL. Use 8 for LTE Cat-M1.
Check the radio signal strength and signal quality:
It is possible to lock the modem to one or more specific bands. This may result in a faster boot cycle as the modem does not need to scan for available bands at startup.
Although the modem may support many different bands, your local network operator may not. Have a look at the LTE Cat-M1 overview to find the available band(s) in your region.
To lock the modem to a specific band, a hexadecimal value representing the band needs to be sent to the modem. To lock the modem to LTE-M band 20, send:
To test if the band(s) is properly set, enter the command:
Example response: +QCFG: "band",0xf,0x80000,0x10004200000000090e189f
The first hex number represents the GSM bands, followed by the LTE-M bands and NB-IoT bands.
To information about the technology used, the network provider and cellular band, enter:
Example response: +QNWINFO: "eMTC","20408","LTE BAND 20",6400.
Configure the modem to only use LTE Cat-M1, not NB-IoT:
The last variable: 1, instructs the modem to process the command immediately. When using: 0, the takes effect after a reboot.
Specify the modem search sequence starting with LTE Cat-M1 (indicated with 02) followed by GSM (indicated with 01) and NB-IoT (03):
Set the APN to data.mono:
Validate if the APN is set correctly:
Expected response: +CGDCONT: 1,"IP","data.mono","0.0.0.0",0,0,0,0,0,0
Activate the PDP (packet data protocol) context:
Test if the PDP context is activated:
Expected response: +CGACT: 1,1
Expected response: +CGPADDR: 1,XX.XXX.XX.XXX
Do you see an IP address? Congratulations! You’ve successfully connected the Quectel modem to Monogoto 🎉
A PING test can be performed to test if the modem has an active data connection with a mobile network.
When cellular modems are idle for a long period of time, cell towers might drop the data connection to save resources. Sending regular PINGs is a good method for testing the data connection, as well as for keeping the connection alive because the operator registers your device as being actively used.
Send 5 PINGs to IP address 8.8.8.8:
Example response:
A UDP payload test when the modem has an active data connection.
Send UDP Payload to the IP address 220.180.239.212:
response:
Send UDP Socket
response:
Close UDP Socket
response:
Great work on connecting the Quectel BG95 to Monogoto! Have a look at the Things logs in the Monogoto Console to find more details about the established connection.
When cellular modems are idle for a long period of time, cell towers might drop the data connection to save resources.
To test if the modes still have an active session, the command AT+CSQ can be sent. If no value or the value 99 is returned, the device lost its session with the cell tower and the modem needs to be re-initialized. This can be done by rebooting the modem using the command AT+CFUN=1,1
BG95 AT Commands Manual (Quectel specific commands)
To find the profile of your SIM, visit the Monogoto Console, open the page Things and select a specific Thing. Scroll down to Mobile Identities to find your profile in the column Network Provider Name.
