Cellular Network Infrastructure

h1. Accelerate3g5 -- unrznbl

h2. Participants

Just one: <unrznbl@unreasonablefarm.org>.

I camp on freenode IRC #osmocom so feel free to get on there and ask a question. Might take a day or two for someone to reply but if you stay on they usually will answer.

h2. Goals

* Help with documentation, testing, troubleshooting via email/irc.

* Research and develop 3G baseband on mediatek chips

* Test postmarketos/ofono on Moto E (surnia) and LG Nexus 5 (hammerhead)

* Play around with qualcomm quectel modules

h2. Details

* debian linux

* EC20 module

* iPhone 4

* various other 3G+ phones to test with

* ZTE Obsidian phone - MT6735 - GSM, UMTS, GPRS, HSPA+, HSUPA, TD-SCDMA, EVDO, LTE Cat 4 (based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaTek)

h2. Journal

* 10/30/2020

** finally got voice working! One simple config change was all that was needed

<pre>

Oct 30 12:16:18 nitb osmo-msc[1729]: <0023> mgcp_client.c:701 Failed to read: r=192.168.1.118:2427<->l=192.168.1.118:2727: 111='Connection refused'

Oct 30 12:16:20 nitb osmo-msc[1729]: <0023> mgcp_client.c:701 Failed to read: r=192.168.1.118:2427<->l=192.168.1.118:2727: 111='Connection refused'

</pre>

and so just had to change osmo-mgw.cfg so that msc could talk to it

<pre>

       mgcp

         bind ip 192.168.1.118

</pre>

and voila! voice! :)

** resolved osmo-msc not starting due to distribution versions of osmo vty and ctrl, once updated to Latest osmo repo versions, osmo-msc starts

** next step: get 3g data working

** excited to test lots of phones, especially postmarketos: samsung klte, motorola osprey, lg hammerhead, motorola surnia

* 04/10/2020

** wrote some CFEngine policy to setup raspberry pi as nitb

** struggled with NTP issues for a while but finally after some good config and a nano3g reboot things are connected!

** trying to make calls/send SMS fails right now. Will email mailing list with logs and config to get some clues

** really need this network to support my testing of ofono on postmarketos on hammerhead (LG Nexus 5) and my fork of termux-api which supports sms/mms

** plan on trying to find some open source MMS gateway to integrate with osmocom nitb (as mentioned previous update)

** will try and publish the CFEngine policy and write a blog post about the experience

* 03/04/2020 

** restarting my efforts to use this setup. Working on a raspberry pi with packages to setup 3g network for

** wireless connectivity between a kindle DX and other devices in the home

** testing sms/mms/group/image/attachements with my hack for command line support in termux android app: https://github.com/craigcomstock/termux-api/tree/smsmms-send-receive

*** will need to find something for MMS on the backend

** hope to have 2-3 devices working with linux/ofono/postmarketos to test with

*** hammerhead

*** surnia (MSM8916 supports mainline but needs device support)

*** Alcatel Go Flip (4044W, MSM8909), will work on after surnia mainline is done

** haven't even worked on 2G mediatek baseband/re lately so will tackle that FIRST before getting into 3G

* 10/31/2018 - rebuilt all NITB sources, configured DHCP, NTPD, got ip.access nano3g connected to nitb laptop and able to register phones on network. sms/calls don't work yet. Phones get kicked off periodically.

* 04/19/2017 - built all required projects with a few warnings and details

* TODO - take build notes and suggest changes in docs, fix warnings in builds?

* TODO - finish setting up and run the network

* TODO - test voice, text, data

* TODO - leverage fernly mediatek bootloader and various mediatek baseband sources to create 3G baseband, osmocom-bb?

* TODO - setup EC20 modules and test

h2. Code

https://github.com/unrznbl/osmocom-bb/tree/mtk-layer1 (can boot a simple firmware that only spits out a bit of data on the USB serial port on fernvale)