As a new user, I am working through the documentation and, as I do, I have run into some roadblocks. My hope here is to share these questions as I think they may be relevant to others and also share lessons learned in the hope they can be helpful too.
First, I want to say that I am very impressed with the work Jared has done to make this experience as painless as possible. I full expect there will be some bumps in the road as I am coming from a very turnkey platform - Particle.
What I have done so far:
- Installed the Zephyr plugin to VS Code
- Installed the Serial drivers needed for my Mac
- Installed newtmgr
- Built and flashed the “Blinky” sample application to my nRF9160 Feather
- First question, what is the difference between the circuitdojo_feather_nrf9160ns and the one with no “ns”?
- Installed the nRF Connect for Desktop v3.9.1 and the LTE Link Monitor v2.0.0 and connected to the device
OK, here are my couple noob comments that I hope will help others:
- There are a few references to editing prj.conf in the documentation but a search for this file shows that there are many of these. Perhaps some clarification as to which prj.conf file is used would be helpful
- The documentation on Verizon says you need to use the command %SHORTSWVER but I could not make this work. I did get a response of “mow_nfr9160_1.2.3” when I used AT+CGMR. Since this is not the v1.1.2 for Verizon. It seem that I am stuck until I order a programmer (~$50) and a Tag Connect Cable (~$45) - correct?
- It might be helpful to indicate in the documentation which of the sample applications assume you have installed and activated a SIM card.
So, it seems like the next steps for me are to:
- Buy the programmer / cables and then
- Flash the firmware to 1.1.2
- Activate a Verizon Sim using the Verizon Thingspace and associate it to my Feather’s IMEI
- Set up an NRF cloud account
- Test cellular connectivity using a sample app - like “tracker”
- Then I would be ready to move on to Golioth
Please let me know if I am missing a step. Thanks in advance for putting up with my questions and - again - thank you for all you have done to make this a less painful transition.
Chip