Summary of WWAN cards configuration

In this github repo, I put together my knowledge about WWAN cards setup, alongside with all initialization scripts.

Huawei ME909s-120 LTE modem

Huawei ME909s-120 is the newest modem of Huawei LTE/UMTS family, and it is sold for around $70 at TechShip.se and at Aliexpress.

The modem is immediately recognized as CDC Ethernet device in Debian 8 kernel, and is visible as usb0 interface. In the scripts below, the ttyUSBx serial ports are aliased to ttyWWANxx, and usb0 is renamed to lte0, in order to avoid any naming conflicts with other devices, and also to avoid possible name changes  due to a kernel upgrade.

cat >/etc/udev/rules.d/99-huawei-wwan.rules <<'EOT'
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="15c1", SYMLINK+="ttyWWAN%E{ID_USB_INTERFACE_NUM}"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="15c1", NAME="lte0"
EOT

cat >/etc/chatscripts/sunrise.HUAWEI <<'EOT'
ABORT BUSY
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
ABORT ERROR
TIMEOUT 10
'' ATZ
OK 'AT+CFUN=1'
OK 'AT+CMEE=1'
OK 'AT\^NDISDUP=1,1,"internet"'
OK
EOT

cat >/etc/chatscripts/gsm_off.HUAWEI <<'EOT'
ABORT ERROR
TIMEOUT 5
'' AT+CFUN=0 OK
EOT

cat >/etc/network/interfaces.d/lte0 <<'EOT'
allow-hotplug lte0
iface lte0 inet dhcp
    pre-up /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/sunrise.HUAWEI >/dev/ttyWWAN02 </dev/ttyWWAN02
    post-down /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/gsm_off.HUAWEI >/dev/ttyWWAN02 </dev/ttyWWAN02
EOT

Resetting GSM modules on Yeastar gateways using Ansible

Sometimes there’s a need to reset a GSM module on a Yeastar GSM gateway. For example, SIM cards of one of our providers get into faulty state every few weeks, and only a reset helps.

The GSM module can either be rebooted via Web GUI, or from the Asterisk console. But the Asterisk console can only work on the same host where the asterisk daemon runs, so you need to make an SSH connection into the Yeastar box to do that. Also it’s impossible to save a public SSH key in a Yeastar box, so only password authentication works.

Ansible is a powerful toolset for managing remote hosts, and it appears to be perfectly suitable for managing the GSM gateways.

Ansible 2.x is available for Debian 8 from jessie-backports repository. There are some important differences from version 1.7 that is installed from default repositories, and in particular, ansible_host and ansible_port variables.

After installing Ansible, uncomment host_key_checking = False in /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg , so that the SSH client stops verifying the remote host SSH signatures. Otherwise the host signatures should be listed in your known_hosts file.

The following lines in /etc/ansible/hosts list your GSM gateways:

[yeastar]
gsm01 ansible_host=192.168.99.66 ansible_ssh_pass=kljckhjeswvdfesv
gsm02 ansible_host=192.168.99.67 ansible_ssh_pass=dmnckjfvrever
gsm03 ansible_host=192.168.99.68 ansible_ssh_pass=dcmnkljdfhfe

[yeastar:vars]
ansible_user=root
ansible_port=8022

If you use the same root password on all devices, the password variable can be moved to the group variables.

Ansible uses SFTP for ad-hoc commands, and SFTP is not available on Yestar gateways. But the raw module works just fine, and resetting a GSM module can now be done with a simple command from your management server:

ansible gsm03 -m raw -a '/bin/asterisk -rx "gsm power reset 2"'

 

Best Android tablet for little children

Our good old Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 Kids Tablet has finally died after over 3 years of everyday heavy use, so I needed a new solution. So far, here is the best combination that I could find:

This silicon case for Samsung Galaxy TAB A 7″ SM-T280 is a solid and protective piece, and it allows the kids hold the tablet with their little hands without slipping off. It also works as a stand, so it’s very convenient for watching videos.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A (7″, 8GB, Metallic Black) fits perfectly into the protective case. The tablet is coming with preinstalled “Kids Mode” application, which is pretty neat, but very restrictive: the kid can watch only the videos on SD card that you mark as safe, and YouTube is not available. You can install kid-safe YouTube wrappers from the Play market, but it’s a bit too much hassle to my taste.

So, instead of the Samsung Kids Mode, I installed Kids Place by kiddoware. With a little payment, you get a good child protection mode, and you can enable YouTube directly on the child screen. The payment is also transferable to other devices under your account.

Also, this portable Bluetooth speaker works as a stand for a tablet, and it produces a much better sound than the tablet’s own speaker. Unfortunately the silicon case is too thick for this stand, but it’s a minor issue, and the speaker can easily be placed behind the tablet.

 

udev rules for ttyUSB devices

In my particular case, there are two physical USB devices that are represented as TTY devices in the kernel: a Gobi2000 3G modem, and a 4-port USB-to-serial adapter. The modem is presented by two ttyUSB devices, and the USB-to-serial adapter adds four more. At the machine boot, these devices get assigned random numbers ttyUSB0 to ttyUSB5, and this assignment changes between reboots.

So, this needs udev rules which would assign symlinks to these devices, and the symlinks should remain valid between the reboots.

As there’s only one physical device of each type attached to the host, we can base our udev rules on idVendor and idProduct attributes. If you need to distinguish between multiple physical devices of the same type, you have to match serial numbers in your udev rules.

FreeSWITCH startup for FusionPBX

If you install FreeSWITCH 1.6 on Debian 8 from official .deb packages, and then add FusionPBX on top, the server boot sequence needs a modification: now FreeSWITCH configuration depends on the presence of Postgresql server, and it would load an empty configuration if the database service is not available at the moment of start.

This fixup adds a dependency on FreeSWITCH systemd service, so that it launches only after Postgresql has started:

mkdir /etc/systemd/system/freeswitch.service.d/
cat  >/etc/systemd/system/freeswitch.service.d/fusionpbx.conf <<'EOT'
[Unit]
After=syslog.target network.target local-fs.target postgresql.service
EOT

tcpkali, TCP load generator

tcpkali is a lightweight and  easy-to-use tool that allows you to generate a traffic load with multiple TCP sessions. You push the load in one or both directions at the same time. Also the tool works easily over a NAT’ed connection. This tool is great if you need to test QoS for VoIP applications.

Here’s an example of a bidirectional load test:

# listening machine: listen on tcp port 8000, send traffic, and use 4 threads.
# the program will exit in 1 hour.
tcpkali -l 8000  --listen-mode=active -m X -T 1h -w 4

# connecting machine: send traffic using 4 threads and 10 simultaneous sessions
# for 1 minute
tcpkali 192.168.1.109:8000 -m Y -c 10 -T1m -w 4

The above test between directly connected PC Engines APU2 boards has shown 1Gbps of traffic, and the average CPU load was about 50%.

Also here are the packaging instructions for Debian, and a 64-bit binary package for Debian 8.

Novatel E371 WWAN LTE modem for APU

Novatel E371 (also known as Dell DW5804) is sold for less than $30 at Aliexpress, and it’s so far the cheapest 4G/LTE WWAN card suitable for PC-Engines APU.

The initialization is fairly simple, although it was tricky to find the right command (AT$NWQMICONNECT=,,).

cat >/etc/chatscripts/lte_on.E371 <<'EOT'
ABORT BUSY
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
ABORT ERROR
TIMEOUT 10
'' ATZ
OK 'AT+CFUN=1'
OK 'AT+CMEE=1'
OK 'AT\$NWQMICONNECT=,,'
OK
EOT

cat >/etc/chatscripts/lte_off.E371 <<'EOT'
ABORT ERROR
TIMEOUT 5
'' AT\$NWQMIDISCONNECT OK
AT+CFUN=0 OK
EOT

cat >/etc/network/interfaces.d/wwan0 <<'EOT'
allow-hotplug wwan0
iface wwan0 inet dhcp
    pre-up /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/lte_on.E371 >/dev/ttyUSB0 </dev/ttyUSB0
    post-down /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/lte_off.E371 >/dev/ttyUSB0 </dev/ttyUSB0
EOT

One more 3G modem (Gobi2000) and a watchdog script

Qualcomm Gobi 2000 is quite old (released 2009), but decent 3G modem, able to deliver up to 7Mbps in downstream in PPP mode. These modems in mini-pcie packaging are available at Aliexpress for less than $10, and make up a great option for 3G connectivity for PC Engines APU boards.

The modem needs a binary firmware to be loaded at the start. Numerous sources in Internet describe the ways to retrieve these files. The kernel driver in Debian 8 recognizes the modem as generic Qualcomm one, and sets up a QMI device (wwan0). But this model does not support packet mode, and you need to run PPP over ttyUSB1 device.

apt-get install -y gobi-loader wvdial
mkdir /lib/firmware/gobi
cd /lib/firmware/gobi
wget --no-check-certificate -nd -nc https://www.nerdstube.de/lenovo/treiber/gobi/{amss.mbn,apps.mbn,UQCN.mbn}

cat >/etc/wvdial.conf <<'EOT'
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet"
Phone = *99#
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB1
Dial Command = ATDT
Baud = 9600
Username = ''
Password = ''
Ask Password = 0
Stupid Mode = 1
Compuserve = 0
Idle Seconds = 0
ISDN = 0
Auto DNS = 1 
EOT

cat >/etc/network/interfaces.d/ppp0 <<'EOT'
auto ppp0
iface ppp0 inet wvdial
EOT

Also this script is useful for 3G connections, because with some providers, the Internet connection gets stalled every few days and needs to be re-connected.

Quality Assurance for VoIP calls: integration scripts

The scripts for integrating FreeSWITCH with Sevana AQuA software are now available at github: https://github.com/voxserv/fsqa

More details on what they are doing are available in this older post: https://txlab.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/quality-assurance-for-voip-calls-2/