Base HAT compatible: Cinterion mPLS8

On my desk I had the opportunity to test a “Cinterion mPLS8” LTE module on sixfab’s “Base HAT” instead of the usual “Quectel EC-25”. Result:

  • As a precaution I removed the jumper SJ4 on the “Base HAT” PCB: In contrast to Quectel the “Cinterion mPLS8” would support a CLK output for a second SIM card on this connection
  • The “Cinterion mPLS8” is recognised instantly when connected to USB with generic drivers: one cdc_ether resembling the data stream interface and five cdc_acm for control (not all of them are usable, see below)
  • The AT-command control of “Cinterion mPLS8” is available on ttyACM1 (e.g. minicom -b 115200 -D /dev/ttyACM1)
  • In my case the “ModemManager GUI” was nicely able to control the device, i.e. after entering there the correct APN the wwan0 interface was up and connected to Internet

Some more remarks:

  1. Due to the enumeration as standardised cdc_ether, the connection setup and DHCP address lease were working out of the box
  2. If someone doesn’t want to use ModemManager, then the AT-command at^swwan=1,1 will bring up the Internet connection on wwan0
  3. The AT-command interface on ttyACM1 offers as well the option to gracefully power off the “Cinterion mPLS8” by sending at^smso. After shutdown, the device can be started again by toggling GPIO 26 due to the PWR_DSBLE functionality of the “Base HAT” (e.g. using gpio -g write 26 and setting ouput first to 1 and then to 0 again)
  4. Some of the ttyACM are not usable, e.g. in contrast to Quectel EC25 (based on Qualcomm 9207), the Cinterion device (based on Qualcomm 9215) doesn’t seem to offer a Qualcomm Diagnostics interface (see e.g. MobileInsight on Qualcomm Diagnostics)
  5. The SIM-card holder on the bottom side of the “mPLS8” should remain empty … it would anyway be obscured by Raspberry’s GPIO header

More information on such mPLS8 can be obtained e.g. at Czech distributor “Sectron”:

Maybe I can add more after having perfomed additional tests (e.g. on GNSS)…
Best regards,
Thomas

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Hi @thomas,

Thank you very much for your feedback. :heart:

Best regards.