Lenovo X240 WWAN

Synopsis

Do you have a Lenovo X240? Did you buy a WWAN card for it? Want to mess around? This project is me doing that. I found out how to make the gps work.. That's kinda cool.

Motivation

Ever since I was six years old I have always dreamed of communicating with my WWAN card over a serial connection and activating it's GPS module. Passion is a strange beast and one never knows exactly which passions will appear in which people. For me it was the Ericsson Business Mobile Networks BV WWAN card. I have fulfilled my childhood dream

Installation and Requirements

1. Ericsson N5321 WWAN card
2. Computer that can connect to said WWAN card Lenovo X240
3. Some tool to allow you to talk to serial devices: sudo apt instsall screen

Doing stuff

1. Print a bunnch of info

bash info.sh

You may see some output that looks like this:

ttyACM0 : N5321 gw Mobile Broadband Modem
ttyACM1 : N5321 gw Mobile Broadband Data Modem
ttyACM2 : N5321 gw Mobile Broadband GPS Port
cdc-wdm1 : N5321 gw Mobile Broadband Device Management
cdc-wdm2 : Ericsson N5321 gw
cdc-wdm3 : N5321 gw Mobile Broadband USIM Port

We will be connecting to the N5321 gw Mobile Broadband Data Modem to configre the device and N5321 gw Mobile Broadband GPS Port to activate the GPS. Given my output that means I will first connect to /dev/ttyACM1 and then /dev/ttyACM2.

2. Configure GPS

Connect to the N5321 gw Mobile Broadband Data Modem

sudo screen /dev/ttyACM1

Configure the GPS Stream, frequency and DGPS.

AT
AT*E2GPSCTL=1,5,1

You may be unable to see your inputted text. When you hit enter the system should respond OK

3. Activate GPS

Connect to the N5321 gw Mobile Broadband GPS Port

sudo screen /dev/ttyACM2

Activate the GPS module.

AT*E2GPSNPD

Hit enter and bam, boom. You got GPS data

4. Wait for satelites

May work best outdoors

sudo cat /dev/ttyACM2 | stdbuf -oL grep -a GPGSA | sed -u 's/\$GPGSA,A,3,/Operating in 3D mode with satelites:\t/; s/\$GPGSA,A,2,/Operating in 2D mode with satelites:\t/; s/\$GPGSA,A,1,/Fix not available. Satelites\t/' | cut -d',' -f 1-12

Fix not available. Satelites ,,,,,,,,,,,
Fix not available. Satelites ,,,,,,,,,,,
Fix not available. Satelites ,,,,,,,,,,,
...
Operating in 3D mode with satelites: 30,11,28,07,17,,,,,,,
...
Operating in 3D mode with satelites: 01,30,28,11,07,17,08,22,19,,,
...

5. Show LAT LON data

sudo cat /dev/ttyACM2 | stdbuf -oL grep -a GPRMC | stdbuf -oL cut -d',' -f 4-7 | stdbuf -oL tr ',' '\t' | awk '{printf("%.8f %s -%.8f %s\n",$1/100,$2,$3/100,$4)}'

42.39248665 N -73.49885369 W
42.39248665 N -73.49885369 W
42.39248665 N -73.49885369 W
...

License

Not coppywritten not licenced, take this for free! Use it! Sell it! Change it! do whatever you want!

References

1. GPS with Ericcson device
2. Using the Ericcson device
3. NMEA codes
4. AT Commands