EM7455B doesn't report cellular failure information

IoT Modules MC/EM Series
1

We have some Panasonic CF33 Toughbooks which come with EM7455B WWAN module. Also we are using Netmotion MobileIQ to collect Cellular connection data. However, Netmotion could not pull Cellular failure event from EM7455B module. Netmotion service Team looked into this issue and told me there was no failure information they could retrieve from EM7455B. In another word, EM7455B didn’t report or log this failure event.
In the meanwhile, we have another model Toughbook - Panasonic FZ55. It has EM7511 which can report Cellular failure to MobileIQ properly.
My question is if there is a way to configure or run any command to enable the Cellular failure report/logging for EM7455B.

Any help would be appreciated!

2

Hi lsong,

Can you take a screenshot of “there was no failure information they could retrieve from EM7455B” and “ EM7511 which can report Cellular failure to MobileIQ properly.”, then share them with me?

Please provide the output of the following commands on EM7455B, EM7511:

ATI9
AT!ENTERCND="A710"
AT!IMPREF?
AT+CPIN?
AT+CIMI
AT+CCID
AT+COPS?
AT!GSTATUS?
AT!USBCOMP?
AT!UIMS?
AT+CGDCONT?
3

Hi Donald,

Thanks for your response.
We used a server called Netmotion MobileIQ to pull the information from mobile devices and display them in web portal. See the screenshot below.

image
image1335×150 28 KB

You can see there is only cellular failure information for model FZ-55 (EM7511). We have another model laptop Panasonic CF-33 (EM7455B). However, no any cellular failure information FOR em7455b being published on that portal.
I checked with Netmotion services. After a couple of months investigation and tests, they told me there was no such information on the Cellular network interface (EM7455B) . So, I thought this model might not enable logging for that failure event by default. Or it did generate the log, but Netmotion didn’t figure how to retrieve it. I don’t what command they used to retrieve the information. I have asked them, but haven’t gotten response yet.
Do you know if any command can read the cellular failure information from the module?

I attached the result of AT commands below.

ATI9
Manufacturer: Sierra Wireless, Incorporated
Model: EM7455B
Revision: SWI9X30C_02.32.11.00 r8042 CARMD-EV-FRMWR2 2019/05/15 21:52:20
MEID: 99000824227613
IMEI: 990008242276132
IMEI SV: 19
FSN: LF008142740210
+GCAP: +CGSM,+DS,+ES

OK

AT!ENTERCND=“a710”
ERROR

AT!IMPREF?
!IMPREF:
preferred fw version: 02.32.11.00
preferred carrier name: ROGERS
preferred config name: ROGERS_001.040_001
preferred subpri index: 000
current fw version: 02.32.11.00
current carrier name: ROGERS
current config name: ROGERS_001.040_001
current subpri index: 000

OK

AT+CPIN?
+CPIN: READY

OK

AT+CIMI
302720591080405

OK

AT+CCID
+CCID: 89302720395911304829

OK

AT+COPS?
+COPS: 0,0,“ROGERS”,2

OK

AT!GSTATUS?
!GSTATUS:
Current Time: 1172909 Temperature: 27
Reset Counter: 1 Mode: ONLINE
System mode: WCDMA PS state: Attached
WCDMA band: WCDMA 850
WCDMA channel: 1037
GMM (PS) state:REGISTERED NORMAL SERVICE
MM (CS) state: IDLE NORMAL SERVICE

WCDMA L1 state:L1M_PCH_SLEEP LAC: E86C (59500)
RRC state: DISCONNECTED UTRAN Cell ID: 003B5998 (3889560)
RxM RSSI C0: -87 RxD RSSI C0: —
RxM RSSI C1: — RxD RSSI C1: —

OK

AT!USBCOMP?
ERROR

AT!UIMS?
!UIMS: 0

OK

AT+CGDCONT?
+CGDCONT: 1,“IPV4V6”,“ROGERS.APN”,“0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0”,0,0,0,0

OK

Thank you!

4

Hi Donald,

I just checked with Netmotion. They are using qmicli command to communicate with Cellular modem.
Is it possible to pull the Cellular failure information through qmicli command from EM7455B?

Thanks,

Lin

5

Hi Donald,

Netmotion told me they were using qmicli command to query the the cellular failure.
Do you know how to run qmicli command in Windows?

Thanks

Lin

6

I’ve never seen anyone use or attempt to use qmicli on Windows, unless it’s some heavy modified version. Are you sure they said qmicli? Maybe they’re using some custom program using Sierra’s SDK or something, not qmicli.

Or did they say they used qmicli just for verifying the behavior of the module? If so, they may have done that in Linux

7

Hi aleksaner0m,

Yes, That’s what I found. I searched on Internet, but can’t find anybody mention using QMI in Windows. I have verified with the software vendor for 4 or 5 times if they were using qmicli to query cellular modem information. Every time, they were pretty sure it was the QMICLI. But they didn’t let me know how they made it. I guess they might be able to simulate a Linux environment in Windows and run from there.
There is another question. I found both the EM7455 and EM7511 were configured to MBIM mode. Is it possible to communicate with a modem with QMI when it is set to MBIM mode?

Thanks,

Lin

8

Using QMI on Windows is completely possible, but you need to use the proper drivers/SDK from Sierra/Qualcomm to do so. A different thing is running qmicli on Windows, that’s not possible.

That makes sense, yes. You can have a virtual machine running some Linux variant, and pass-through the USB device from the windows host to the Linux VM, and then run qmicli on there. That is fully possible.

Yes! Qualcomm devices in MBIM mode expose a “QMI service”. If you use qmicli, you can run every command on both MBIM-capable and QMI-capable cdc-wdm ports exposed by the Linux kernel. The qmicli tool can detect which mode the device is (looking at the kernel driver in use) and enable QMI over MBIM automatically if needed.

9

Hi aleksander0m,

Thanks for your response. I have a few questions

  1. Do you know if any tool can query modem status through QMI interface in Windows? I installed Windows QMI driver and skylight QMI connection manager, but didn’t find where I can run the query.
  2. My vendor said they were using QMICLI command “QMI_WDS_GET_PKT_SRVC_STATUS (0x22)” to retrieve information from cellular interface. Is there any equivalent command in AT or windows NETSH can pull the same information?
  3. The vendor said with above QMICLI command, they were able to query EM7511, but not for EM7455. As you said there is a QMI service in MBIM mode, I am wondering if there is a configuration to turn the QMI service on/off in MBIM mode. I noticed both our EM7511 and EM7455 modems are in MBIM mode (Interface bitmask: 0000100D). However, the EM7511 has config type “MBIM USBIF” and the EM7455 has config type “Generic”. Is this difference would cause problem for QMI query for EM7455?

Thnaks!

10

No idea, I don’t have any experience with Windows.

That QMI message has an optional field that includes the exact “call end reason” for the last modem disconnection. The QMI_WDS_PKT_SRVC_STATUS_IND indication emitted by the modem asynchronously when it gets disconnected has the same info.

I have no idea about what windows NETSH is, can’t help with that.

But for AT commands, you can probably try to get some info about the disconnection with the generic AT+CEER (see 3GPP TS 27.007 for reference), the reported message there may be somewhat equivalent.

I don’t think that has anything to do with the QMI over MBIM support, from my experience it always works very well in all modules. A different thing would be whether the QMI_WDS_GET_PKT_SRVC_STATUS response contains the call end reason TLVs or not. What kind of response did they have for the EM7511 compared to the EM7455?

11

Hi aleksander0m,

Thanks for your response.
When I run “sudo qmicli -p -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --wds-get-packet-service-status” in Linux, I just got “Connection status: disconnected”. It didn’t give me any reason. Does the command I used equal “QMI_WDS_GET_PKT_SRVC_STATUS (0x22)”? Why no detail reason attached?

For AT command, the EM7455 doesn’t support AT+CEER command. Any alternative command?

Is there any configuration for QMI/Modem to add the call end reason TLVs to the QMI_WDS_GET_PKT_SRVC_STATUS response ?

What is the difference between config type (Generic) and config type (MBIM USBIF)?

Our vendor didn’t show me the original response from EM7511. They just said that they can retrieve information from EM7511 interface with QMICLI. But there is no any information on EM7455 interface when communicating with QMICLI.

Thanks,

Lin

12

When you run --wds-get-packet-service-status like that, you’re creating a full new WDS client, so the information reported could not be associated to a specific connection attempt. The way to test this would be to manually run --wds-start-network with --client-no-release-cid and then re-use the same CID to all the next WDS operations you’re doing with --client-cid. Look at the contents of the qmi-network program (it’s a shell script) and try to replicate manually what’s done there.

Really? The thing is, that command should be sent after a connection attempt launched via AT commands, otherwise it may not reply anything right. I’d bet something like that is happening. You’ll need to investigate that if needed.

No, there is no such thing. But the limitation of the WDS client in use is a real thing. You can have multiple WDS clients handling multiple PDN connections to multiple different APNs, and each client has its own state of the connection attempt. You must make sure you query connection status on the WDS client that performed the connection attempt, or you won’t get the correct status info, and the call end reason TLVs may be missing.

No true idea. I assume that config type string is the one explaining the USB config type in use; maybe the Generic one refers to the generic USB layout in the device, and that is MBIM in the EM7455? I don’t think this matters much truth be told, I think it’s just a label of the type of USB layout in use. The EM74xx and EM75xx families are different, so it could be just a naming difference.

Don’t know what they tried, so cannot comment on what to do here. My suggestion still is to make sure the correct WDS client is used when doing this check.