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By hogwell
#201241
I've been trying out the LTE Cat M1 IoT eBlox Arduino shield, running through the examples.

I got it to work and was able to send an SMS message through hologram.

But sometimes the Shield seems to lose its registration to the operator after successfully running the Register sample.

Other samples can get stuck then at the lte.begin call and the only solution is to unplug the Arduino+Shield and plug it back in
to get things working again and run Register again.

I'd like to deploy this at a remote location eventually and cannot be unplugging it and plugging it back in to get it connected
to the LTE operator again.

My thought was to use pin 5 to power cycle the eBlox and rerun the registration procedure in my sketch if connection is lost.

However, even holding the Power button down for 5 seconds does not turn off the Pwr led on the shield and also seems
to do nothing to reset the shield because the Register sketch still locks up until I unplug and plug in the whole setup again.

How can I simulate powering down and up of the eBlox radio to allow it to be reinitialized from my sketch without physically unplugging the board? Is the power button supposed to do that, or is there something else involved?

Maybe others have had similar issues?
By hogwell
#201256
A follow up... I've tried cycling the RESET pin (Arduino pin 6) instead of POWER and have having some better results in re-registering the radio. My connection is still very spotty, though, even after adding an external antenna.
(I do live in a rural area with a weak signal.)
By hogwell
#201354
Well, I never could get this board working for me.

I'm exploring other options for my project.

It would work once (e.g. initialize and send a text through Hologram), but then would fail and/or lock up on initialize.

The only cure was to unplug from power and restart - not acceptable in the field.

This could be a software issue, so I'll keep my eye out for an update to the Sparkfun library for this board.

I'd be interested to hear about any experiences of others using the LTE shield.